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SUMMITEERS CORNER A place for those interested in Summiteering, Bagging or Highpointing.

The Surprising History of Lists of Irish Summits Myrddyn Phillips who assisted MV by providing list data in our early days, takes an interest in the history of hill and mountain lists, in this case lists about Irish Hills. You can view a spreadsheet detailing his researches. Click here. Astonishingly the history includes nearly 40 lists and that before the year 2000. There are a few more he hasn't included as yet (though he plans to I gather) including County Highpoints and some MV lists which started in 2002. The history is interesting from a number of points of view and shows a progression in terms of comprehensiveness and accuracy in line with the improving maps of Ireland. MountainViews believes that for summiteering to become a mass activity or discipline of hillwalking, a degree of selection is required to present a coherent family of lists. We also believe that the state of the art for lists goes well beyond the basic geography of early lists and should include as accurate hill-surveying as necessary, cultural information such as all names including those in Irish, geology, summarised data about available routes and a framework of appropriate area names. Additionally ongoing maintenance is a requirement of a modern list in our view. MountainViews now has a system for allowing any member to suggest improvements to its lists (Propose Places Database Change) which over time will, we believe, ensure accuracy and comprehensiveness. Additionally MountainViews website presents list data in the context of a huge amount of crowd-sourced comments, ratings, photos, videos and GPS tracks. Nevertheless, do take a look at this history of lists and be amazed. You can also see Myrddyn's Blog Here

Ireland – The List of Lists

Introduction

To access the Table to the List of Irish Hill Lists please click {here}

When in 1929 the Scottish Mountaineering Club published an article by James A. Parker entitled ‘List of the Mountains in the British Isles 3,000 feet or over in height’ it was the first time that Irish hills had been catalogued using any form of criterion.  Since this time there have been over 70 listings to the Irish hills, these comprise published as well as unpublished works.  Some of these listings are updates to published lists; others are regional listings of hills, some follow set criteria, whereas others are subjective.

Before detailing what the Table comprises, I would like to express my thanks to Jeff Parr and David Purchase for their inspiration, guidance and advice; I am indebted to both as without their help this Table would not be as thorough as it is today.

The Table is a work in progress and when new listings are published or become known to the author it will be updated.  As of publication the Table details known Irish hill lists upto the year 2000, the listings compiled since this date will be added to the Table over the upcoming months.  If people accessing the Table know of any lists that are not represented please contact me, my email address can be found at the ‘About Me’ page heading on the Mapping Mountains blog.

Although the headings within the Table can be thought of as self-explanatory, a brief explanation to their meaning may help those accessing the detail.

To access the Table to the List of Irish Hill Lists please click {here}

The Table consists of the following:

Year:  This is the year of publication, in some instances this is not necessarily the year that appears on the cover of the publication.  For listings that remain unpublished this is the year of compilation.  The lists appear chronologically, where two or more lists appear for the same year without specific month publication, they appear alphabetically by list compiler’s surname.

Author / List Compiler:  When listings are published within books or journals that comprise other material the name of the individual or group responsible for the book or journal appears, as well as that for the hill list compiler.

Title:  This is the title of the hill list, for listings that appear in publications that include other material the publications title is also given.

Publisher:  This column gives the name of the publisher with a hyperlink if on-line information is known to be available.

Minimum Height:  If set criteria have been used they appear in the following columns, with the first column detailing the minimum height used in the hill list.

Maximum Height:  If a maximum height has been detailed within the hill list it appears in this column.

Minimum Prominence:  This is the minimum prominence used in the hill list.  Prominence is also referred to as ‘drop’ or ‘reascent’, and is the height difference between the summit and col connecting the hill to next higher ground along the watershed.

Number of Summits:  This is the number of hills given in the hill list.  If a hill list distinguishes between ‘Separate Mountains’ and ‘Subsidiary Tops’ by column separation or by name indentation both figures are usually given.

Other Criteria:  This column details other criteria if used.

Notes:  This column gives details that are found in the ‘The List’ as well as personal details relating to ‘The Author’ with a hyperlink if on-line information is known to be available.

The Table to the List of Irish Hill Lists has benefited from the generous help of many people, I am indebted to:

With special thanks to Jeff Parr, David Purchase, Ruth Magness and the facility of and the staff at The National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth.

Thanks to Jean Boydell, Irvine Butterfield, Mark Caslin, ‘Clem’ Clements, Sam Corbett, Alan Dawson, Michael Dewey, John Edmonson, Alun Peter Fisher, John Forsythe, Dennis Golden, Bill Gregor (Cork Mountaineering Club), Peter Haigh (The Gritstone Club), Ian Hardy, John Kirk, Brent Lynam, Joss Lynam, Paul Nolan, Conor O’Hagan (Walking World Ireland), Patrick O’Sullivan (Editor of Irish Mountain Log), Patricia Quigley (Trinity College), Brian Ringland, Eddie Ross, Simon Stewart, Mark Trengove, Richard Webb, Peter Wilson and Rob Woodall.

Myrddyn Phillips (2015)

To access the Table to the List of Irish Hill Lists please click {here}