England · Lake District National Park

Bigland Barrow

Bigland Barrow, 193 m, Westmorland and Furness
Bigland Barrow, 193 m, Westmorland and Furness. Photo by mauldy, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Height
193 m · 633 ft
Grid reference
SD 36357 83985
Coordinates
54.24758, -2.97823
County / area
Westmorland and Furness
OS Landranger
96 97
OS Explorer
OL7S
Summit feature
rock outcrop 7m N of tower
Key col
SD357828 (168 m)

About Bigland Barrow

Standing near Backbarrow in the southern Lake District, Bigland Barrow is topped by a concrete lookout tower, which Wainwright characterised as a relic of wartime.

The hill has its own chapter in The Outlying Fells of Lakeland, where Wainwright's suggested round runs anticlockwise from Newby Bridge.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Bigland Barrow (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.

Access rights here

Conditional Right to roam: Right to roam only on mapped CRoW open access land.

Permission needed Wild camping: Needs the landowner's permission — the Dartmoor commons are the only exception in England.

General position for England — local byelaws, seasonal restrictions and closures can override it. Full details: access rights in England · check another location.

Daylight at this summit today

Sunrise
Sunset
Daylight
Civil twilight ends

Computed astronomically for 54.248, -2.978. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Summit weather live

Loading forecast for the summit (193 m)…

Forecast adjusted to summit altitude. Weather data from MET Norway (CC BY 4.0).

Finding the summit

Surveyor's note

ground a few metres SW is slightly lower.

The recorded summit point is rock outcrop 7m N of tower. That distinction matters on broad or flat tops, where the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method
Abney level
Record revised
25-Jan-24
Drop measured from
SD357828 · 168 m

Survey notes are field observations recorded in the Database of British & Irish Hills (v18.3, CC BY 4.0) by the hill-surveying community.

Long-distance paths past this hill

One waymarked long-distance route runs within 2.5 km of the summit — useful if you are linking this hill into a longer walk, or want a made path for the approach.

RouteTotal lengthFrom summit
Cumbria Coastal Way 108 km 1.4 km

Route lines © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); distance from the summit computed by OpenFell.

Which hill this one belongs to

Bigland Barrow is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Gummer's How (321 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 168 m.

Grouping is by prominence alone: a summit belongs to the nearest higher Marilyn it connects to without a deeper intervening col. Over a large massif that can gather hills no one would walk in a single day, and which few would describe as parts of the same mountain — it is a measure of independence, not a suggested route.

Nearest listed peaks

PeakHeightDistance
Newton Fell North 237 m 3.2 km
Staveley Fell 265 m 3.9 km
Finsthwaite Heights 180 m 4.4 km
Gummer's How 321.1 m 5.2 km
Newton Fell South 177 m 5.5 km
Hampsfell (Wainwright summit) 220 m 5.8 km