- Height
- 346 m · 1,135 ft
- Prominence
- 6 m
- Grid reference
- NY 03742 13048
- Coordinates
- 54.50359, -3.48803
- County / area
- Cumberland
- Region
- Lake District C&W
- OS Landranger
- 89
- OS Explorer
- OL4S 303
- Summit feature
- large cairn
- Key col
- NY038130 (340 m)
About Dent
Dent stands on the western fringe of the Lake District between Cleator Moor and Egremont, and is traditionally the first fell that walkers on Wainwright's Coast to Coast route meet. It is also known as Long Barrow. Though it reaches only a little over 340 m, the outlook is unbroken: the Cumbrian coast from the Ravenglass estuary to the Solway Firth and Scotland, the Isle of Man out west, and Pillar and the Sca Fells inland to the east.
The hill has a surveying pedigree. As Dent Hill it served as one of five Cumberland stations used by the Ordnance Survey for the Principal Triangulation up to 1809, along with Black Combe, Scilly Banks near Whitehaven, High Pike and Cross Fell. There is no trig pillar, which suggests it was passed over during the later Retriangulation. Forestry planted over the last couple of decades now covers the slopes facing north towards Cleator Moor.
Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Dent (fell) (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
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Computed astronomically for 54.504, -3.488. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.
Summit weather live
Loading forecast for the summit (346 m)…
Forecast adjusted to summit altitude. Weather data from MET Norway (CC BY 4.0).
Finding the summit
cairn is gradually being dismantled to build a new cairn 20m E at NY 03763 13049 on ground c.1m higher.
The recorded summit point is large cairn. 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
- 15-Aug-12
- Drop measured from
- NY038130 · 340 m
Classification history: Highest point is the Marilyn, hill 2504.
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.
| Route | Total length | From summit |
|---|---|---|
| Coast to Coast Walk | 303 km | 0.4 km |
Route lines © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); distance from the summit computed by OpenFell.
Which hill this one belongs to
Dent is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Dent — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 340 m. That hill is outside the lists OpenFell publishes, so it has no page here.
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.