Foel Las (SH 894 687)
There has been a Significant Name Change to a hill
that is listed in the Y Trichant – The 300m
Hills of Wales and Y Trechol – The Dominant
Hills of Wales, with the summit height, bwlch height and their locations,
the drop, dominance and status of the hill confirmed by a Trimble GeoXH 6000
survey conducted by Myrddyn Phillips on the 5th April 2016, and
latterly substantiated by LIDAR analysis.
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| Foel Las (SH 894 687) |
The criteria for the two listings that this name change applies to are:
Y Trichant –
The 300m Hills of Wales – Welsh
hills at or above 300m and below 400m in height that have 30m minimum drop, with an accompanying sub list entitled the Sub-Trichant with the criteria for this
sub category being all Welsh hills at or above 300m and below 400m in height
with 20m or more and below 30m of drop. The list is authored by Myrddyn Phillips, with the
Introduction to the list and the renaming of it appearing on Mapping Mountains on the 13th May 2017.
Y Trechol - The Dominant Hills of
Wales - Welsh P30 hills whose prominence
equal or exceed half that of their absolute height. With the
criteria for Lesser Dominant status being those additional Welsh P30 hills whose
prominence is between one third and half that of their absolute height, with
the Introduction to the Mapping Mountains publication of this list appearing on the 3rd December 2015, and which is now available in its entirety on Mapping Mountains in Google Doc format.
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| LIDAR image of the two Foel Las summits at SH 886 686 and SH 894 687 |
The hill is adjoined to the Mynydd
Hiraethog group of hills, which are situated in the central northern part of
North Wales (Region A, Sub-Region A2), and it is positioned with the A548 road
and the Afon Elwy to its north and west, the B5382 road to its south and a
minor road to its east, and has the small community of Llangernyw to the
south-west and Llanfair Talhaiarn towards the east north-east.
The hill appeared in the
original Welsh 300m P30 list on Geoff Crowder’s v-g.me website under the name
of Tre-pys-llygod, which is a
prominent name that appears close to the summit of this hill on contemporary
Ordnance Survey maps.
| Tre-pys-llygod | 320c | SH895688 | 116 | 17 | Clem/Yeaman |
During my early hill
listing I paid little regard to name placement on the map, or the meaning of
names and to what feature the name was appropriately applied to. Therefore I prioritised names for listing
purposes that I now understand are either inappropriate or where another name
is viewed as being more appropriate.
As a variety of Ordnance
Survey maps place the name Tre Pys Llygod applicable to the land mass taking in
this and its adjacent lower westerly hill, I wanted to follow the history of
this hill’s recorded name to see if another was more appropriate.
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| Extract from the Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger map |
As the summit of this hill comprises bounded land
the details for it were examined on the Tithe map. The
term Tithe map is generally given to a map of a Welsh or English parish or
township and which was prepared after the 1836 Tithe Commutation Act. This act allowed tithes to be paid in cash
rather than goods. The Tithe maps gave
names of owners and occupiers of land in each parish and importantly for
place-name research they also included the name of enclosed land. This enclosed land is usually based on a
field system, however not every field is given a name, but many are and
especially so in Wales.
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| Extract from the Tithe map |
The enclosed land where the summit of this hill is
situated is given the number 633 on the 1842 Tithe map, this can be cross
referenced against the apportionments; it is these apportionments that give the
name of the owner or occupier of the land as well as the name of the land. The land where the summit of this hill is
situated is named as Ffridd foelas in the apportionments, with the details on the Tithe map appearing in the parish of Llanfair Talhaiarn in
the county named as Denbigh.
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| Extract from the apportionments |
Since publication of
these P30 lists on Geoff Crowder’s v-g.me website there have been a number of
Ordnance Survey maps made available online, some of these are historic such as
the series of Six-Inch maps on the National Library of Scotland website, whilst
others are current and digitally updated such as the Vector Map Local hosted on
the Geograph website and which is entitled the Interactive Coverage Map. One of the historic maps now available is the
Ordnance Survey Draft Surveyors map which formed the basis for the first
publicly available Ordnance Survey One-Inch ‘Old Series’ map, and it is the
Draft Surveyors map that I next examined.
The Draft Surveyors maps
consist of the preliminary drawings made by the Ordnance Surveyor’s surveyors
between the 1780s and 1840 and formed the basis for the first publicly
available One-Inch map. They were drawn
at scales of six inches to the mile for areas considered of particular military
significance and down to two inches to the mile for other areas. Fair copies were then produced from these
preliminary drawings to one inch to the mile and then copper plates were
prepared for printing. The Draft
Surveyors maps for the whole of Wales are now available online and they form an
important part in the study of Welsh upland place-names as they bridge the time
frame between the late 18th century and the mid-19th
century when the Ordnance Survey produced their first One-Inch maps, and
importantly for this hill and its listed name, this map records the name for
this and its lower westerly hill as Y Foelas.
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| Extract from the Ordnance Survey Draft Surveyors map |
The next map to examine
was the One-Inch ‘Old Series,’ this was the first map that Ordnance Survey
published, and they were based on the proceeding Draft Surveyors map. Their publication culminated from the whole
of Britain being surveyed between 1791 and 1874 and the detail gathered therein
produced at a scale of one inch to the mile and published in sheet format
between 1805 and 1874. The One-Inch ‘Old
Series’ maps for the whole of Wales are now available online; they are also
available in map format as enlarged and re-projected versions to match the
scale and dimensions of the Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger series and are
published by Cassini. This series of
maps forms another important part in the study of Welsh upland place-names and
bridge the time frame leading to the production of the Ordnance Survey base map
of the Six-Inch series. It is this map
that first places the name of Tre-pys-llygod against these hills, with the name
of Y Foel las also placed adjacent to the lower westerly hill.
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| Extract from the Ordnance Survey One-Inch 'Old Series' map |
Finally the series of
Ordnance Survey Six-Inch maps were examined and the name of Tre-pŷs-llygod
is recorded in large letters, with the name of Foel-lâs
being recorded adjacent to the westerly of the two hills next to what looks
like a small-holding.
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| Extract from the series of Ordnance Survey Six-Inch maps |
The detail on the
Six-Inch map and the use of the term Ffridd on the Tithe map implies that the
small-holding existed and it was named Foel Las and the enclosed land taking in
the summits of these two hills was a part of their ffridd and this was known as
Ffridd Foel Las, with the name of Tre Pys Llygod being a later addition.
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| The Trimble GeoXH 6000 gathering data at the summit of Foel Las (SH 894 687) |
Therefore, the name this hill is now listed by in
the Y Trichant is Foel Las, and this
was derived from a number of sources including the Tithe map, Ordnance Survey
Draft Surveyors map, Ordnance Survey One-Inch ‘Old Series’ map and the Ordnance
Survey series of Six-Inch maps.
The full details for the
hill are:
Group: Mynydd Hiraethog
Name: Foel Las
Previously Listed
Name: Tre-pys-llygod
OS 1:50,000 map: 116
Summit Height: 319.8m (converted to OSGM15)
Summit Grid
Reference: SH 89473 68747
Bwlch Height: 202.6m (LIDAR)
Bwlch Grid
Reference: SH 89078 67030 (LIDAR)
Drop: 117.2m (Trimble summit and LIDAR bwlch)
Dominance: 36.64% (Trimble summit and LIDAR bwlch)
My thanks to Aled
Williams for advice relating to this hill’s name
Myrddyn Phillips (December
2019)
