Update to The Relative Hills of Britain

April 2010

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 2006.

Acknowledgments

Particular thanks are due to John Barnard and Graham Jackson for several accurate survey results. Changes arising from survey results are indicated below by an asterisk. Thanks also to others who have helped uncover new Marilyns or new summits for existing Marilyns, notably Clem Clements, Chris Crocker, Jonathan de Ferranti, Dave Hewitt, John Owen, Tony Payne, David R Smith and Rob Woodall.

Changes since April 2006

Three new Marilyns have been discovered since 2006: Creag na Criche, Sail Chalmadale and Mynydd y Cwm, while Raw Head and Baystones have been deleted. The number of Marilyns has therefore risen to 1555 - 1216 in Scotland, 177 in England, 157 in Wales and 5 in the Isle of Man (Black Mountain is now counted in Wales).

Additions

The 22 new Marilyns discovered since 1992 are listed below. Arnside Knott is now the smallest English Marilyn and Cheriton Hill 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).

Deletions

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

Baystones is listed in RHB but was deleted in 1995, reinstated in 2002 and finally deleted again in 2010. Two hills not listed in RHB were promoted to 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. Milk Hill was wrongly promoted in the first place, owing to the misleading representation of contours on the OS 1:10000 map.

Hill Changes

Five hills listed in RHB have been superseded by a nearby summit:

Birks Fell (35B) was replaced by Horse Head Moor for several years but was reinstated in 2006.

Summit Changes

There have to date been 16 other 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The height for Sgurr nan Eugallt was confirmed by the Ordnance Survey from unpublished survey data. All other heights are taken from published OS maps or survey results.

Twin Peaks

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

Several other summits have two or more nearby points of apparently equal height. Examples include:

Na Maoilean (3B) has four tiny 350m contour rings, the largest of which is at NM976374. The situation is unclear for some other Marilyns where summit duplication or relocation is possible. Some notable cases, where the alternative summit has a different name and 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 Corbetts were agreed in consultation with the Scottish Mountaineering Club and are now used in 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 continue to be used alongside Maol Domhnaich, Li a''Tuath etc.

SubMarilyns

A SubMarilyn is a hill with a drop all round of 140-149m, i.e. within ten metres of being a Marilyn (32 have a drop of 148m or 149m and are within one or two metres of being Marilyns). There are currently 206 SubMarilyns, including ten Murdos, eleven Hewitts, five islands (Soay, Tiree, Seil, Colonsay, Lundy) and ten hills in the south of England. A list of all SubMarilyns is available from www.rhb.org.uk

Height Changes

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

Full details of current heights and drops of all Marilyns and numerous other sets of hills are provided in the Database of British Hills, available from www.biber.fsnet.co.uk

All 204 Scottish Marilyns over 3000 feet are now Munros. The number of Murdos is still 444, after the promotion of Knight''s Peak on Skye to 915m by the Ordnance Survey (though the precise height is still uncertain) and the demotion of Sgurr nan Ceannaichean from Murdo to Corbett following a survey showing it to be 913.4m.

Corbetts and Corbett Tops

There are 220 Marilyns from 2500 to 3000 feet high with a drop of over 150m, including Sgurr nan Ceannaichean but not counting Beinn Talaidh, which a survey has shown to be 761.7m; just under 2500 feet. There are no hills of Corbett height with 150-152m drop. There are a further 450 Corbett Tops with a drop of 30m-149m, giving a total of 670 Corbett Tops. Full details are available in TACit Tables.

Grahams and Graham Tops

The set of Scottish Marilyns from 2000 to 2500 feet was renamed Grahams in memory of the late Fiona Torbet (née Graham) who published her own list of Scottish Highland hills between 2000 and 2500 feet in The Great Outdoors magazine in November 1992 (six months after RHB). 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 Grahams comprise the 222 relevant Marilyns listed in RHB plus Ladylea Hill (now 610m) and Beinn Talaidh (761.7m). The official list of Grahams and Graham Tops is available in Graham Tops and Grahamists.

Hewitts

The RHB list of Summits of Wales and England Above Two thousand feet has been revised and renamed Hewitts (Hills of England, Wales and Ireland over Two Thousand feet) to allow for expansion to Ireland. There are 315 Hewitts in England and Wales (including 610m Birks Fell). 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 2010 there were 212 members. Full details 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. The top 40 in the Hall of Fame as at the beginning of 2010 is summarised below.

Humps

A list of all 2987 hills with 100m drop all round is now available as an e-book called More Relative Hills of Britain, compiled by Mark Jackson. These hills are called Humps, an acronym for Hundred Metres Prominence.

Further Information

Update sheets, newsletters, the list of SubMarilyns and the Humps e-book are all available at www.rhb.org.uk. Many other datasets are available via the RHB newsgroup at www.yahoogroups.com/group/rhb