England · Lake District National Park

Claife Heights

2 classifications here — Marilyn and HuMP — belong to lists OpenFell holds only part of, so they have no list page. See how far the coverage goes.

Claife Heights, 270 m, Westmorland and Furness
Claife Heights, 270 m, Westmorland and Furness. Photo by Stephen Dawson, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Height
269.9 m · 885 ft
Prominence
176.1 m
Grid reference
SD 38204 97344
Coordinates
54.36786, -2.95265
County / area
Westmorland and Furness
OS Landranger
96 97
OS Explorer
OL7N
Summit feature
outcrop 2m SSW of trig point
Key col
SD 3531 9933 (93.8 m)

About Claife Heights

Claife Heights is less a peak than a stretch of upland west of Windermere, and Wainwright was blunt about it: no definite summit, with the highest ground somewhere around 900 feet. The Ordnance figure of roughly 270 metres attaches to a broad rise rather than a distinct top.

Its 177 metres of prominence is enough to make it a Marilyn, which is unusual for ground of this height and reflects how cleanly it stands apart from the fells around it. Wainwright gave it a chapter in The Outlying Fells of Lakeland, describing a clockwise circuit from Far Sawrey that passes Moss Eccles Tarn. He called the Heights delightful, while noting that forestry had since closed off walking lines and shut down views that were once open.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Claife Heights (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 54.368, -2.953. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Summit weather live

Loading forecast for the summit (270 m)…

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

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is outcrop 2m SSW of trig point. On broad or flat summits the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method
Abney level
Record revised
03-Jun-24
Drop measured from
SD 3531 9933 · 93.8 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.

The Claife Heights group

One other listed summit sits in the same prominence group, with Claife Heights as the independent hill at its head.

Listed summits in the Claife Heights prominence group
SummitHeightDrop
Latterbarrow 244 m 44 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
Latterbarrow 244 m 2.3 km
Brant Fell 191 m 3 km
Orrest Head 238 m 3.8 km
School Knott 231.7 m 4.3 km
nameless (School Knott) 247 m 4.7 km
Grandsire 251 m 5 km