Black Fell

About Black Fell

This Black Fell is one of the most northerly parts of the Pennines, standing just north of the A686 west of Alston. It reaches 664 m with 87 m of prominence, and appears in the Simm, Hewitt, Nuttall, Buxton & Lewis, Bridge and Clem lists.

The hill sits on the Pennine watershed: streams off its eastern flank feed the River South Tyne and the North Sea, while those to the west run to the Eden and the Solway Firth. Mountain Days in the Pennines suggests an 18 km circuit from Renwick over Thack Moor and Black Fell, describing the grassy fells north of the A686 as only rarely visited.

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

Access rights here

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

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Sunset

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Daylight

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Civil twilight ends

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Computed astronomically for 54.793, -2.549. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is ground 1m S of trig point. 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

23-Oct-23

Drop measured from

NY646418 · 577 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.

Which hill this one belongs to

Black Fell is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Cross Fell (893 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 577 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