Update to The Relative Hills of Britain

April 2002

Alan Dawson

This update sheet summarises the most important changes to The Relative Hills of Britain (RHB) since the book was published in April 1992, and also highlights changes since the previous update sheet in April 1999.

Acknowledgments

I should like to thank everyone who has been in contact with helpful comments, and in particular those who have helped uncover new Marilyns or new summits for existing Marilyns, namely Clem Clements, Charles Everett, Dave Hewitt, Tony Payne and David R Smith. All other comments have also been much appreciated, and all suggestions have been investigated wherever possible.

Changes since April 1999

There have been no entirely new Marilyns discovered in the past three years, and no existing ones deleted. However, there has been one major change: Baystones (Section 34B), deleted in 1995, has been reinstated with an extra metre of height and a new summit location. The number of Marilyns has therefore risen to 1552 for the first time - 1213 in Scotland, 179 in England, 156 in Wales and 5 on the Isle of Man (Black Mountain is in both England and Wales). Baystones is the first summit to gain promotion after being relegated, though there have been two relegations following promotion (Abberley Hill and Milk Hill). Other significant changes since 1999 concern confirmation of new summits for Sgurr nan Eugallt (10B) and Maesglase (30F). Their new heights and grid references are listed below, along with details of other summit and name changes.

Additions

The 17 new Marilyns discovered since 1992 are listed below. Cheriton Hill is now the easternmost Marilyn. The drop column refers to the difference in metres between the summit and the col connecting the hill to the next Marilyn (c means the drop is estimated from contours, in the absence of spot heights).

Deletions

The following seven hills listed as Marilyns in RHB are now known to have less than 150m drop all round.

Two further hills not listed in RHB were accorded Marilyn status in 1996 but deleted in 1998:

The promotion of Abberley Hill resulted from inspection of a disused railway cutting, which was filled in at the critical col shortly after its promotion. In contrast Milk Hill was wrongly promoted in the first place, owing to the misleading representation of contours on the OS 1:10000 map.

Hill Changes

Four hills listed in RHB have been superseded by a nearby summit:

Some walkers who have visited Birks Fell concluded that the highest point is in fact the summit listed in RHB as 610m, although this no longer has a spot height on any OS map, so the position remains uncertain.

Summit Changes

There have to date been 16 confirmed summit relocations, where the highest point has been changed to a nearby grid reference on the same hill. New heights and grid references are shown below.

The new heights for Sgurr nan Eugallt and Baystones have been confirmed by the Ordnance Survey from unpublished data, whereas that for Maesglase is derived from independent amateur surveying. All other heights are taken from published OS maps, although opinions differ in some cases, e.g. Bryn Arw, Lambrigg Fell and Crowborough. The situation is also unclear for some other Marilyns where summit relocation or duplication is possible. Some notable cases, where the alternative summit has a different grid reference, are listed below:

Name Changes

The following Marilyns have been officially renamed. In some cases the general hill name is preferred to the summit name as it is more widely used. The new names for the five Corbetts have been agreed in consultation with the Scottish Mountaineering Club and will be used in the latest edition of the SMC Corbetts guidebook.

Numerous hills in the Western Isles (Lewis/Harris, Uists, Barra and nearby islands) have been given Gaelic names on recent OS maps, although many of the original names derive from Norse. Thus Clisham is now An Cliseam, Heaval is Sheabhal and so on. In line with current policy of accepting OS maps as definitive unless clearly wrong, most Marilyns in Region 24 now have new official names, although names such as Muldoanich and North Lee will no doubt continue to be used alongside Maol Domhnaich, Li a'Tuath etc.

Twin Peaks

These six pairs of hills are of equal height but the drop between the two is less than 150m.

Na Maoilean (3B) has four tiny 350m contour rings, the largest of which is at NM976374. Several other hills have two or more nearby points of apparently equal height. Examples include:

SubMarilyns

A SubMarilyn is a hill with a drop all round of 140-149m, i.e. within ten metres of being a Marilyn (21 have a drop of 149m and are within one metre of being Marilyns). There are currently 205 SubMarilyns, including ten Murdos, nineteen SubCorbetts, 23 SubGrahams, eleven Hewitts, five islands (Soay, Tiree, Seil, Colonsay, Lundy) and ten hills in the south of England. A list of all SubMarilyns is available online or on request.

Height Changes

There have been minor changes to the accepted height of numerous hills since RHB was published. Precise details are available in a series of TACit Tables published by TACit Press:

Details of height changes to Scottish Marilyns under 600m are available in electronic form on request.

Munros and Murdos

All 205 Scottish Marilyns over 3000 feet are now Munros, as the 1997 revision to Munro's Tables promoted three Marilyns and five non-Marilyns from Tops to Munros. In 1998 it was confirmed that the highest point of Beinn a'Chroin (1C) was 942m at NN387185 and therefore this point became the new Munro. This change does not affect the Marilyns as Beinn a'Chroin has a drop of only 137m. In 2001 the Ordnance Survey confirmed the highest point of Beinn a'Chaorainn (9C) as the Central Top at NN386850, with the South Top being 1050m. The only effect on the list of Marilyns is the increase in its height from 1050m to 1052m, as the summit grid reference remains the same. The number of Murdos (over 914m with 30m drop) is still 444.

Corbetts and Corbett Tops

There are 219 Marilyns from 2500 to 3000 feet high with a drop of over 150m. This is one fewer than in RHB, as Beinn Talaidh has dropped below 2500 feet. Although Corbetts require a drop of 500 feet (152.4m) rather than 150m, there are no hills of Corbett height with 150-152m drop. There are a further 451 Corbett Tops with a drop of 30m-149m, giving a total of 670 Corbett Tops. Full details are available in TACit Tables.

Grahams and New Donalds

The Scottish Marilyns from 2000 to 2500 feet were referred to in RHB as the Elsies (LCs, short for Lesser Corbetts). This subset of the Marilyns was renamed Grahams in memory of the late Fiona Torbet (née Graham) who published her own list of Scottish hills between 2000 and 2500 feet in The Great Outdoors magazine in November 1992 (six months after RHB). This list had no precise definition, and 34 current Grahams were omitted. Fiona had been unaware of the RHB list at the time, but later agreed to accept the relevant Scottish Marilyns as the definitive list of such hills. The 224 current Grahams comprise the 222 Elsies listed in RHB plus Ladylea Hill (now 2001 feet) and Beinn Talaidh (now 2497 feet). The official list of Grahams is available in The Grahams and the New Donalds, published by TACit Press.

Hewitts

The RHB list of Summits of Wales and England Above Two thousand feet (Sweats) has been revised and renamed Hewitts (Hills of England, Wales and Ireland over Two Thousand feet) to allow for expansion to Ireland. There are 314 Hewitts in England and Wales, 212 in Ireland. Full details of all Hewitts are available in the set of three TACit Tables published by TACit Press (one each for England, Wales and Ireland).

Marilyn Hall of Fame

Membership of the Marilyn Hall of Fame is open to anyone who has climbed over 600 Marilyns. By April 2002 there were 84 members, led by Ann Bowker who has climbed 1545 of the 1552 Marilyns: all except the St Kilda six and Mullach Buidhe in the Shiant Islands. Details of all members are given in the annual Marilyn Hall of Fame newsletter (Marhofn), which also includes news and views from Hall members and other Marilyn baggers. Copies are available online or on request from the author. A summary of the upper third of the Hall of Fame at the end of 2001 is shown below.

Further Information

Update sheets, newsletters and the list of SubMarilyns are available online via www.staclee.freeserve.co.uk
For further information or comment please send email to: alan@staclee.freeserve.co.uk