Bagging rounds

The UK hill lists

British hillwalking runs on lists. Some are measured — a height, a drop, a formula. Some are one person's taste written down and never revised. Knowing which is which tells you why two guidebooks disagree about how many mountains a range contains.

OpenFell holds 11 lists in full — every GB member of each, 2,262 entries in all across 1,740 hills, since most hills count for more than one. Each list page carries the complete round in height order, with the drop, region and grid reference for every hill, and a breakdown of where the list falls.

The lists side by side

Height thresholds are in feet because that is how the lists were written; the metric equivalents are exact conversions, which is why they look so unround.

UK hill lists compared by extent, size and height range
List Where Hills Highest Lowest
Munros Scotland 282 Ben Nevis 1,345 m Beinn Teallach 915 m
Munro Tops Scotland 226 Carn na Criche 1,265 m Carn na Caim South Top 915 m
Corbetts Scotland 222 Beinn a' Chlaidheimh 914 m Beinn na h-Uamha 762 m
Grahams Scotland 231 Beinn Talaidh 762 m Leagag 601 m
Donalds Southern Scotland 89 Merrick 843 m Innerdownie 610 m
Wainwrights Lake District 214 Scafell Pike 978 m Castle Crag 290 m
Wainwright Outlying Fells Lake District fringe 116 Walna Scar 621 m Humphrey Head 53 m
Nuttalls England and Wales 442 Snowdon - Yr Wyddfa 1,085 m Calf Top 610 m
Hewitts England and Wales 331 Snowdon - Yr Wyddfa 1,085 m Calf Top 610 m
Furths England and Wales 21 Snowdon - Yr Wyddfa 1,085 m Tryfan 918 m
Historic county tops United Kingdom 88 Ben Nevis 1,345 m Boring Field 81 m

Measured lists and chosen lists

Most of these lists are arithmetic. A hill qualifies if it clears a height and drops far enough to its key col — the lowest point on the highest route to higher ground. Change the drop threshold and you change the list: the Nuttalls ask for 15 m and admit 442 hills in England and Wales, while the Hewitts ask for 30 m over the same ground and admit 331. Neither is wrong. They are answering different questions about what makes a bump a mountain.

Two of the lists here are not arithmetic at all. The Wainwrights are the fells A. Wainwright chose to give a chapter, and the Munros are separated from their subsidiary Tops by editorial judgement rather than a rule. That is why the Munro count has moved over the years and the Wainwright count never has — a resurvey can promote or demote a Munro, but nothing can add a 215th chapter to a finished book.

Heights here are surveyed, not traditional

Figures come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, which records modern survey results. Where a GPS survey has moved a summit by half a metre, our figure will differ from the round number on an older map — and occasionally that half-metre is exactly what decides whether a hill is on a list at all.

Lists we hold only part of

A hill page will sometimes badge a summit a Marilyn or a Simm. Those are real classifications recorded in our source data, but OpenFell does not hold every member of those lists, so there is no list page for them and no completion count you could trust. Here is exactly how far the coverage goes.

Partially held hill lists: UK members in the source data against members published here
List On OpenFell UK members Coverage
HuMP 978 3,041 32%
Simm 1,285 2,546 50%
Marilyn 815 1,590 51%
Synge 331 648 51%
Significant Island of Britain 0 604 0%
Birkett 311 541 57%
Murdo 439 441 100%
Fellranger 221 230 96%
Current County/UA Top 67 180 37%
Trail 100 96 100 96%
Donald Top 1 52 2%

Counted over UK hills only. The site's inclusion rule is that a hill earns a page by appearing on one of the 11 lists above, so members of these lists are present when they also qualify some other way and absent when they do not. See data sources for the rule in full.

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