Hill lists in the British Isles Totally Explained

Everything about Hill Lists In The British Isles totally explained

The mountains and hills of Great Britain, and to a lesser extent Ireland, are the subject of a considerable number of lists which categorise them by height, topographic prominence, or other criteria. They are commonly used as a basis for peak bagging, whereby hillwalkers attempt to reach all the summits on a given list. The oldest and best known of these lists is that of the Munros, mountains in Scotland over 3,000 feet (914 m); other well-known lists include the Corbetts, Wainwrights and Marilyns.

Scotland

Munros

The Munros are mountains in Scotland over 3,000 feet (914.4 m). The list was originally compiled by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891, and is modified from time to time by the Scottish Mountaineering Club (SMC). Unlike most other lists, the Munros don't depend on a rigid prominence criterion for entry; instead, those which satisfy the subjective measure of being a "separate mountain" are regarded as Munros, while subsidiary summits are given the status of tops. There are 284 Munros and 227 further tops, all of them in the Scottish Highlands.

List of Munros

Corbetts

The Corbetts are peaks in Scotland between 2,500 and 3,000 feet (762 and 914.4 m), with a relative height of at least 500 feet (152.4 m). The list was compiled in the 1920s by John Rooke Corbett, a Bristol-based climber and SMC member, and was published posthumously after it was passed to the SMC by his sister. as the Elsies (LCs, short for Lesser Corbetts). They were later named Grahams after the late Fiona Torbet (née Graham) who had compiled a similar list around the same time. Dawson continues to maintain the list, which contains 224 hills distributed as follows: Highlands south of the Great Glen 92, Highlands north of the Great Glen 84, Central and Southern Scotland 23, Skye 10, Mull 7, Harris 3, Jura 2, Arran 1, Rum 1, South Uist 1.

List of Grahams

Murdos

The Murdos are an attempt to apply strict objective criteria to the Munros and their associated tops. They are all the summits in Scotland over 3,000 feet (914.4 m) with a relative height of at least 30 m (98 feet). There are 444 Murdos, compared to 284 Munros or 511 Munros plus tops. The list was compiled and is maintained by Alan Dawson.

TACit Tables: The Murdos

— original published list of Murdos by region.

Outside Scotland

Nuttalls

The Nuttalls are hills in England and Wales over with a relative height of at least 15 metres (50 feet). There are 442 Nuttalls in total (253 in England and 189 in Wales). The list was compiled by John and Anne Nuttall

and published in two volumes, The Mountains of England & Wales .
By including hills that rise by as little as 15 m above their surroundings, the list of Nuttalls is sometimes criticised for including too many insignificant minor tops. The Hewitts (see below) are one attempt to avoid this.
With the exception of Pillar Rock, a rocky outcrop on Pillar in the Lake District, the peaks of all of the Nuttalls can be reached without resort to rock climbing. As of February 2008, 157 people are known to have completed the list, though this includes some who didn't climb Pillar Rock, which the authors permit.

List of Hewitts and Nuttalls in Wales

List of Hewitts and Nuttalls in England

Hewitts

The Hewitts are Hills in England, Wales and Ireland over Two Thousand feet (609.6 m), with a relative height of at least 30 m (98 feet). The English and Welsh lists were compiled and are maintained by Alan Dawson; the Irish list is by Clem Clements. The list addresses one of the criticisms of the Nuttalls by requiring hills to have a relative height of 30 m (98 feet), thus excluding the 125 least prominent Nuttalls from the list.
There are 526 Hewitts in total: 178 in England, 137 in Wales and 211 in Ireland. The current TACit booklets contain 525 hills, with Black Mountain being counted in both England and Wales. Since their publication in 1997, Birks Fell in England has been added and Black Mountain deemed to be in Wales only.
Scottish hills are by definition excluded. Those that meet the criteria are published in three parts: the Murdos, and the Graham Tops. If all these were added to the Hewitts, it would amount to 2,639 hills in the British Isles.

List of Hewitts and Nuttalls in England

List of Hewitts and Nuttalls in Wales

Wainwrights

The Wainwrights are hills (locally known as fells) in the English Lake District National Park that have a chapter in one of Alfred Wainwright's Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. There are 214 hills in the seven guides. There are no qualifications for inclusion other than an implied requirement of being at least 1000 feet high, to which Castle Crag is the sole exception. A further 116 hills were included in the supplementary guide, The Outlying Fells of Lakeland.

List of Wainwrights

The Outlying Fells of Lakeland

Marilyns

The Marilyns are hills in the British Isles that have a relative height of at least 150 m (492 feet), regardless of distance, absolute height or other merit. There are currently 1,554 Marilyns in Great Britain: 1,214 in Scotland, 179 in England, 156 in Wales and 5 on the Isle of Man. (Black Mountain is on the border between England and Wales, but counted in Wales.) There are a further 453 Marilyns in Ireland. The list was compiled and is maintained by Alan Dawson.

County tops

Climbing in the highest point of each British county is another popular form of peak bagging, dating back at least to the 1920s when John Rooke Corbett was attempting to visit them all.

List of historic counties of England and Wales by highest point

List of English counties by highest point

List of Welsh principal areas by highest point

List of Scottish counties by highest point

List of Scottish council areas by highest point

Peak bagging culture

In the Lake District especially, there's a tradition of finding the maximum number of tops, including all the major summits, which can be visited in a 24 hour period - see Lakeland 24 hour record. This usually requires fell running, and a support team. The pre-war record, set by Bob Graham, of 42 tops, has become a standard round, which has been repeated by over 1,000 people.

Further Information

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