Talk:List of Hewitts and Nuttalls in Wales

Sorting the tables

Should these tables be sortable? By including images within the tables, each taking up multiple rows, you are changing the appearance of the table when sorted. Perhaps it would be better to place the images in a gallery below the table? -- Maelor  13:07, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Brecon Beacons list

Is there a good reason for separating out the mountains which are to be found within the Brecon Beacons National Park into just two lists - one headed the 'Black Mountains' and one headed 'Brecon Beacons'. The term Brecon Beacons is generally used in two ways - i) to refer to what I might call the central Beacons - the massif which extends from Pen y Fan and Corn Du eastwards to Talybont - the traditional Brecon Beacons prior to the designation of the national park and 2)to refer collectively to all of the mountains within the national park ie those in the Black Mountains, those in Fforest Fawr and those forming a part of the Black Mountain/Y Mynydd Du as well as those of the central Beacons. Either way it would make sense if breaking down the mass of mountains within the national park as a whole to break it down into i)the Black Mountains, ii) the Black Mountain, iii) Fforest Fawr and iv) the central Beacons - ie four areas, each with its own distinctive character. It still leaves some loose ends such as the uplnads of Mynydd Llangynidr and Mynydd Llangatwg and the overlap of Fforest Fawr and the Black Mounatin at Fan Hir and Fan Brycheiniog. Any comment?
Geopersona (talk) 17:54, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

In the Nuttalls' book, Wales is divided into ten thirteen regions: seven ten in North Wales, two in South Wales (the Brecon Beacons, and the Black Mountains), and one for the whole of Mid-Wales. At present, this page uses the Nuttalls' regions for North and South Wales, although it divides Mid-Wales in three. The justification for dividing Mid-Wales is stronger than for further division of the Brecon Beacons — the Radnor Forest peaks are about 20 miles from the Elan Valley ones and 30 miles from the Plynlimon group, and Plynlimon must be approaching 20 miles away from the Elan Valley. (See, for example, this map showing all of the Welsh Nuttalls.) The division is somewhat artificial, in that the Plynlimon and Elan Valley peaks are really both parts of one long upland range, and it is only the two ends that reach 2000 ft — if the list included peaks down to 500 m, as Dewey's list does, sub-divisons of mid-Wales might look somewhat different.

In South Wales, if you want any divisions at all, the division into the Brecon Beacons and the Black Mountains makes sense because the Usk valley forms a very low divide between the two. This is borne out by the fact that the prominence of Waun Fach is over 600 m — i.e. to get from the top of the Black Mountains to the top of the Brecon Beacons, you have to descend at least 600 m. By contrast, to get from Fan Fawr (the highest point in Fforest Fawr) to Pen y Fan (the highest point of the 'central' Brecon Beacons), you have less than half that descent; and the situation with Fan Brycheiniog (which I would say is definitely part of the Black Mountain, not Fforest Fawr) isn't all that much better.

The division into Fforest Fawr and the Black Mountain is also problematic. I personally, tend to think of Fforest Fawr as the mountains between the A4067 and the A470 (Storey Arms), though looking at the smaller-scaled Ordnance Survey maps, that appears to be incorrect as it continues over Fan Hir and (perhaps) Fan Brycheiniog. Also, once you've detached Fforest Fawr and the Black Mountain from the central Brecon Beacons, it starts to look a bit odd including Cefn yr Ystrad. Really, the valley containing the Talybont, Pentwyn and Pontsticill reservoirs is just as much of a division as the valleys containing the A4067 and A470 — but this would carve Mynydd Llangynidr off as a separate region with just one peak. (Fortunately, Mynydd Llangatwg never reaches 2000 ft, so we can ignore it.)

And if we start dividing South Wales up to that degree, shouldn't we do the same in North Wales? In the Cadair Idris region, shouldn't the Tarrens be a separate region, and likewise the three Maesglase peaks? What about the unfrequented upland around Esgeiriau Gwynion that can't quite decide whether it's part of the Arans or the Berwyns? And if we're making divisions at that level, it seems hard to justify having Arenig Fawr and Arenig Fach in the same region; and the case of keeping Mynydd Mawr, the Nantlle Ridge, and the Hebog group as a single region is similarly reduced.

I'm not against further divisions at all, but I don't think we should consider South Wales in isolation. Ideally we'd consider the List of Hewitts and Nuttalls in England at the same time. (That list also follows the Nuttalls' regions, with the exception of splitting Dartmoor from the Cheviots — arguably the Nuttalls' most bizarre grouping as they must be 400 miles apart!)

—ras52 (talk) 13:18, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Cheers Ras52 - you nicely set out the problems that attend on constructing any sort of hierarachy of mountains and tops and I'd agree that whichever way you play it you will end up with seeming oddities. If that's the way that the book does it then perhaps that's sufficient precedent to go with, though of course books can change - look at the various editions of the Munro's guides with tops and summits coming and going in a sort fo dance! The peaks of the Black Mountain have however never been a part of the Brecon Beacons - though they have since 1957 been a part of the Brecon Beacons National Park, similarly with the peaks of Fforest Fawr and those of the Black Mountains. Had the committee back in the 1950's chosen a different name for the national park which more accurately reflected its geography then perhaps we wouldn't be having this discussion. Then again, Black Mountains, Brecon Beacons, Fforest Fawr and the Black Mountain National Park wouldn't have tripped off the tongue!
The distinction between summits of the Black Mountain and Fforest Fawr is a curious one because I, like most others would place a boundary between Fan Hir, Fan Brycheiniog and Fan Gyhirych separating them into the two blocks (and wonder what best to do with Cefn Cul) but that's just a modern recreational perspective on the matter. Looking back in history the royal hunting ground of Fforest Fawr did extend west to include Fan Hir and Fan Brycheiniog so from that historical perspective it is quite correct to talk of these two peaks a being in Fforest Fawr. There's no 'right' answer just a more complex reality, I guess.
It's odd how names can morph over the years so that the entire colection of hills from Abergavenny to Llandeilo is known as 'the Brecon Beacons' or even as 'The Brecons' - a phrase that I hate but there we are. Odd that a collection of mountains in the north of England is known as 'The Lakes', that another range largely without 'peaks' is called 'The Peak' or even 'the Peaks' (ughh!) and then there's the 'ups' in SE England known as 'The Downs'.
all the bestGeopersona (talk) 06:50, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Apologies in advance for what is going to be another long reply. How to divide a collection of peaks in area into logical ranges is something I've been thinking about, on and off, for some time. However, first can I pick up on something you said in your earlier comment?

Either way it would make sense if breaking down the mass of mountains within the national park as a whole to break it down into i)the Black Mountains, ii) the Black Mountain, iii) Fforest Fawr and iv) the central Beacons - ie four areas, each with its own distinctive character.

At the time, I agreed with your comment about them each having quite distinct characteristics. But yesterday I happened to be sitting on top of Fan Gyhirych eating my sandwiches, and there was a clear view of all of main peaks from Fan Brycheiniog in the west to Pen y Fan in the east. What struck me was how similar they all looked. Each with long, gentle south ridges and very steep north faces; all covered with the same beige-coloured grass and very little heather or obvious peat bog; and no bare rock in sight anywhere (the erosion around the top of Pen y Fan being too far away to see). Had I been able to see as far as Waun Rydd, Mynydd Llangynidr or the Black Mountains, I might have thought differently. I'm now wondering whether the differences I thought I had noted between the different areas were more down to time of year and/or weather conditions when I've been there?

Anyway, back to the grouping of peaks into ranges. I find the idea of coming up with some unambiguous way of dividing an area into separate ranges very appealing. However, I expect it is fundamentally doomed to fail because there are many separate criteria that contribute to how you might choose to divide an area up into mountain/hill ranges. For example, there are topographical, geological, cultural and geopolitical criteria, each potentially suggesting different divisions. It is the first of these that I've been thinking about most. peaklist.org has a big section on orometry (the measurement of mountains) in section 7.3 the author discusses what he calls a prominence adjusted lineage area or domain. A bit of browsing suggests that this idea has, to some extent, caught on amongst prominence enthusiasts on both sides of the Atlantic.

Using the techniques discussed there, I have produced a map of Wales and the nearby parts of England showing the cells at 150 m, 300 m, 600 m and 900 m. Clearly actually putting a map like that on the article would be inappropriate as original research; but as a way of presenting the prominence and parentage information for the purposes of talk-page discussion, I don't think it's inappropriate.

What does this map actually show? Well, I think it demonstrates that from a purely topographical point of view, of all the mountains in South and Mid Wales, the Black Mountains have the strongest case for being in their own list (the Black Mountains are part of the 600 m domain for Waun Fach while the rest of South and Mid Wales is in the Pen y Fan domain, and you need to look at the 150 m domains before Fforest Fawr separates from the central Brecon Beacons). However, I think the map also demonstrates that solely using a criteria such as prominence domain is inappropriate. In South and Mid Wales, the 300 m cells look a reasonably sound choice — we would then have

• Radnor Forest
• The Cambrian Mountains
• The Black Mountains
• Fforest Fawr east of the A4067 and the Brecon Beacons (including Mynydd Llangynidr and Mynydd Llangatwg)
• The Black Mountain

This is more or less what we currently have, except that the Plynlimon and Elan Valley groups are merged, and Black Mountain is split from the rest of the Brecon Beacons. I could live with that. (In fact, the former sounds like a jolly good idea as the current division is an artifice of the 2000 ft cut-off — the Cambrian Mountains only reach that height at the two ends.) But lets now look at North Wales. The three 3000 ft regions remain (the Carneddau, the Glyderau and the Snowdon Massif), as do the Arans and Berwyns except that Cyrniau Nod and its neighbours move from the latter to the former, which I imagine would be uncontroversial.

However, the remaining N Wales cells are likely to be more controversial — probably down-right inappropriate. The region called "Moel Hebog, Mynydd Mawr and the Nantlle Ridge" is split into its three constituent parts, as is "Moel Siabod and the Moelwynion" into its two parts. (Mynydd Mawr and Moel Siabod are then both ranges with just one peak.) The northeast corner of the Arenigs around Carnedd y Filiast would split off into a separate region (basically the Hiraethog); and the Tarrens and the Maesglase peaks would split from Cadair Idris into two separate regions, as they're really more an extension of the Arans/Berwyns range than the Idris range. And finally, and least appropriately of all, the Rhinogydd would split in three: the outlier of Y Garn would be another single-mountain region, and the main ridge would split between Rhinog Fach and Rhinog Fawr.

I'm not sure how helpful this long, rambling comment has been. I think the main conclusion I would make from it is that there isn't a single right way of doing this. Each time you come up with a logical set of rules on how to divide country into ranges, you get a few silly results from it.

— ras52 (talk) 17:46, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your analysis, Ras - most thoroughly done and a fascinating read. Interestingly, if you were so inclined, the principles you've set out here could perhaps be applied to the regions in the Marilyn list? I'm all for dividing peaks up by topography and use the 'cell' concept a lot in my own research into the 30m hills (dunno if you've seen the results), so it would be great to see a few of the irregularities (mainly in Scotland, I believe) patched up.

Secondly, that map you made is AWESOME to put it lightly. Where did you get the coloured contour data? And it takes skill to plot the runoffs and make the whole thing look nice. It would be great if you would consider uploading it to the RHB group - please forgive me if you're not a member, but you should be! - and even better if you could do the rest of Britain! I'm sure it would be fine to put it on the List of Marilyns in Wales, by the way, if only as a visual aid to show the positions of all the Marilyns, something which is really needed, and that would do the job spectacularly... Please consider! :-)

But to return to the task at hand, the proposed divisions of south Wales look fine. With north Wales, a higher prominence cutoff is perhaps appropriate, but as you have pointed out, it leads to irregularities and therefore distances and sizes of areas need to be taken into account. I would propose leaving the Nuttalls' divisions as they are but with the following alterations, all based on topographical sense :-)

Manod Mawr is topographically part of the Arenigs so perhaps it should be moved.

Cyrniau Nod and associates are closer to the Arans than the Berwyns so perhaps they should go with them.

Maesglase and the Tarrens are more closely linked to the Arans than Cadair Idris, so I would split them off into their own group.

All the best - Mark J (talk) 21:52, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments about the map. I'll respond shortly to these on your user talk page as they're probably veering off-topic for this page.

Using separate criteria for North Wales than for the rest of Wales can certainly be justified — N Wales is considerably more rugged than the rest of Wales. (The kurtosis of elevation model ought to be able to quantify that, which would be an interesting thing to look at, though far too far into original research for Wikipedia.) If you draw up a list of 2000 ft peaks in N Wales by prominence, the top fifteen are:

Snowdon · Carnedd Llewelyn · Aran Fawddwy · Glyder Fawr · Cadair Idris · Moel Siabod · Moel Hebog · Y Llethr · Arenig Fawr · Tarren y Gesail · Mynydd Mawr · Craig Cwm Silyn · Moelwyn Mawr · Rhinog Fach · Cadair Berwyn

The first nine of these the highest points of nine of the traditional 10 N Wales regions. (And I think it is fair to describe them as 'traditional' as, for example, Dewey's list of 2000 ft peaks use the same 10 regions as the Nuttalls.) The tenth region comes from splitting the Berwyns from the Arans. On prominence grounds, this division is somewhat arbitrary, but without the division, the combined Berwyns–Arans region would be very large indeed. To a large extent, I think that one of the larger reasons for Dewey's and the Nuttall's regions is an aim to end up with around 15 peaks per region. And there is an argument for Wikipedia simply adopting their regions without modification.

What do other sources do? In 1911, J Rooke Corbett published a list of 2500 ft mountains. He doesn't name his regions, but they are:

1. Berwyns, 2. Carneddau, 3. Glyderau, 4. Snowdon Massif, 5. Moel Siabod & the Moelwynion, 6. the Arenigs and Arans, and Cadris Idris, 7. South Wales.

In 1940, Edward Moss produced a list down to 2000 ft with regions called:

1. Carnedd, 2. Glyder, 3. Snowdon, 4. Nantlle, 5. Festiniog, 6. Arenig, 7. Rhinog, 8. Berwyn, 9. Aran, 10. Cader Idris, 11. Corris, 12. Plynlimon, 14. Central Wales, 15. Radnor Forest, 16. Fforest Fawr, 17. Brecon, 18. Black Mountains.

The regions used by Dewey and the Nuttalls are clearly derived from this. However Moss' regions take two of your three suggestions into account. Specifically, Maesglase and the Tarrens are a separate group called Corris (after the village); and Cyrniau Nod is in the Arans region. Manod Mawr is still in the Festiniog group, though. Moss also uses the three mid-Wales regions used in this article; however, he also separates Fforest Fawr from the main Brecon Beacons which is how this thread started. (He simply cuts the ridge at the Storey Arms, rather than say between Fan Gyhirych and Fan Hir which is where the 300 m prominence cell boundary lies.) The only other difference that I can see between Moss' regions and ours is that he has Pen y Garn in the Plynlimon group rather than the Central Wales group (equivalent to our Elan Valley one). That makes sense, and I think Pen y Garn has only ended up where it is because of a mistake on my part when I reformatted the list.

As to Manod Mawr, I can see the logic of keeping it with the mountains west of Blaenau Ffestiniog which is what all the sources I can find do. But equally, it is really just another peak on the edge of the Migneint, much like Arenig Fach and the various nearby Deweys such as Y Gamallt, Y Garnedd, Cerig y Ieirch and Carnedd Iago. If those four peaks were all over 600 m, I expect Manod Mawr would be included in the Arenig region and I doubt there would be any discussion about it.

— ras52 (talk) 18:00, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation

See this thread here: Talk:List of Marilyns in Wales#Pronunciation. —ras52 (talk) 13:22, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

All 710 Welsh peaks

I've created a list on cy:Wiki of 710 peaks in Cymru and am searching frantically for the en counterpart. Do you have such a list? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 05:24, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

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update needed

Craig Gwaun Taf doesn't seem to be included yet - see list on the Nuttalls' site. PamD 17:16, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Propose to re-direct page

Two new articles have been created, List of Hewitt mountains in England, Wales and Ireland, List of Nuttall mountains in England and Wales, which are October 2018 downloads of the Database of British and Irish Hills (DoBIH) for Hewitts and Nuttalls.

These articles also have linking to individual Wikipedia articles (including Grid Ref linking). They have the DoBIH parent peak for Nuttalls (as per other new Wikipedia articles on Munro Tops and Donald Tops), and linked to their individual peak Wikipedia articles. In addition, they have the full classification listings for each individual peak (e.g. whether it is a Birkett etc.). The Nuttall article also has a DoBIH column called "Area (Nuttalls)" which is the DoBIH estimate of the most appropriate area title that is reflective of the structure used in the Nuttalls book (while respecting some specific issues with their structuring). The new articles were downloaded automatically and required no manual intervention (except to select columns and fix some links), so OR issues are minimal.

In contrast, this article has data which is old (many height and prominences have changed), is un-sourced (e.g. a BBC researcher could not quote this data), and has a break-up of peaks into Sections which makes it hard to update the tables by download (Nuttalls and Hewitts, given their low prominence, are more prone to changes). This article also contains "parent" peak data for every Nuttall and Hewitt which is not appropriate. The DoBIH only record "parent peaks" for peaks which are not in themselves parents (e.g. parents do not have parents), or which are not so isolated that a parent title is not meaningful. We should go with the DoBIH approach, who are experts in this area (e.g. parent peaks are core to prominence calculations) and avoid the approach taken in this article, which I think is confusing.

However, time and effort have gone into making this article, so I did not want to REDIRECT myself without checking first. Britishfinance (talk) 13:38, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Have also updated the new Nuttalls page to rank by prominence so a reader can see how many Nuttalls are Hewitts and Marilyns and P600s etc. Britishfinance (talk) 11:11, 19 October 2018 (UTC)