Thursday 28 July 2016

Mapping Mountains – Significant Name Changes – Y Trichant - The 300m Hills of Wales


Coed y Cefn (SN 950 682)

There has been a Significant Name Change to a hill that is listed in the Y Trichant, and the following details are in respect of a hill that was surveyed with the Trimble GeoXH 6000 on the 14th April 2015.

The criteria for the list that this name change affects are:

Y Trichant These are the Welsh hills at and above 300m and below 400m in height that have 30m minimum drop,  with the introduction to the re-naming and the publication history of this list appearing on Mapping Mountains on the 13th May 2017.

The hill is situated in the Elenydd, which is a range of hills taking in vast tracts of wild moor and is situated in the central heartland of Wales.  The hill is positioned 2 km west of the town of Rhaeadr Gwy (Rhayader) which is beside the Afon Gwy (River Wye).

Coed y Cefn (SN 950 682)

The hill appeared in the 300m P30 list on Geoff Crowder’s v-g.me website under a partly invented name of Ochr-cefn, with an accompanying note stating; Name from buildings to the West.  During my early hill listing I thought it appropriate to either invent a name for a hill, or use a name that appeared near to the summit of the hill on Ordnance Survey maps of the day.  My preference was to use farm names and put Pen, Bryn or Moel in front of them, or as in this instance, just use the name of the farm which appears close to this hill’s summit on the Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger map.  This is not a practice that I now advocate as with research either conducted locally or historically an appropriate name for the hill can usually be found.

An extract from the Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger map with the name Ochr-cefn appearing near to the summit of this hill


Ochr-cefn
    340c
    SN951682
    136/147
  200
    Name from buildings to the West


Since publication of these P30 lists there have been a number of Ordnance Survey maps made available online, some of these are historical such as the series of Six-Inch maps on the National Library of Scotland website, whilst others are current and digitally updated such as the enlarged map on the Geograph website.  This latter map also includes many spot heights that do not appear on any other publicly available map, and it was the study of this map that necessitated the change in this hill’s listed name.

An extract from the Ordnance Survey enlarged map hosted on the Geograph website

The Ordnance Survey enlarged map hosted on the Geograph website gives this hill a 342m spot height at its summit, and with a 252m spot height on the area of its bwlch it means this hill has 90m of map prominence, which is the minimum value required to be classified as a Subhump.  These details were posted on the RHB Yahoo group forum on 06.12.13, see below:


Sub-HuMP enthusiasts may find the following of interest:

Coed y Cefn    SN 950 682    342m summit    252m bwlch at SN 943 684

Ochr-cefn being the name of a farm and not that of the hill.  With Coed y Cefn supported by various old maps.

Myrddyn


Excluding all near farm names it is the name Coed y Cefn that appears nearest to this hill’s summit on the enlarged Geograph map and this is supported by a number of other maps, including the Ordnance Survey Six-Inch, the historical and the current 1:25,000.  Except for the current Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer map which is prone to inappropriate placement of hill and feature names, all other maps are consistent in the placement of the name Coed y Cefn. 

An extract from the current Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer map.

Therefore, the name this hill is now listed by in the Y Trichant is Coed y Cefn and this was derived from a number of different scaled Ordnance Survey maps. 


The full details for the hill are:

Group:  Elenydd

Name:  Coed y Cefn

Previously Listed Name:  Ochr-cefn 

Summit Height:  342.2m (converted to OSGM15)

OS 1:50,000 map:  136, 147

Summit Grid Reference:  SN 95076 68217
  
Drop:  90.8m (converted to OSGM15)




Myrddyn Phillips (July 2016)



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