Great How - Eskdale Fell
3 classifications here — Birkett, Synge and Fellranger — belong to lists OpenFell holds only part of, so they have no list page. See how far the coverage goes.

- Height
- 522 m · 1,713 ft
- Prominence
- 53 m
- Grid reference
- NY 19746 03992
- Coordinates
- 54.42501, -3.23849
- County / area
- Cumberland
- Region
- Lake District C&W
- OS Landranger
- 89 90
- OS Explorer
- OL6N
- Summit feature
- cairn and OS bolt on rock
- Key col
- NY200041 (469 m)
About Great How - Eskdale Fell
Great How, also written Great Howe, is a 522-metre hill in the west of the English Lake District, lying south of Scafell Pike and east of Burnmoor Tarn. It sits in the civil parish of Eskdale, within the Cumberland unitary authority area and the ceremonial county of Cumbria.
The hill is classed as a Fellranger, described by Richards in the Wasdale volume of his book series, and is among the 21 such summits — originally 18, before the extension of the Lake District — that are not included in Wainwright's list of 214. It is also classed as a Dodd, Dewey, Birkett and Synge.
Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Great How (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 54.425, -3.238. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.
Summit weather live
Loading forecast for the summit (522 m)…
Forecast adjusted to summit altitude. Weather data from MET Norway (CC BY 4.0).
Finding the summit
bolt is 2m SE of cairn.
The recorded summit point is cairn and OS bolt on rock. That distinction matters on broad or flat tops, where the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.
- Record revised
- 23-Oct-23
- Drop measured from
- NY200041 · 469 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.
Get food nearby
3 places to eat or drink within 10 km of the summit, rated under the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (Scotland runs its own Food Hygiene Information Scheme, a pass/fail equivalent).
| Place | Type | Rating | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Woolpack Inn | Hotel/bed & breakfast/guest house | 5 out of 5 | 3.1 km · S |
| Eskdale Campsite | Takeaway/sandwich shop | 5 out of 5 | 3.1 km · S |
| Wasdale Head Inn | Hotel/bed & breakfast/guest house | 4 out of 5 | 3.8 km · N |
Classifications and ratings are the local authority's own and can be coarse — this is a lead, not a guarantee of opening hours or that food is served to non-residents. Follow a name through to the official rating page to check, and confirm before you rely on it.
Food hygiene data from the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland (Open Government Licence v3.0). Distances and directions computed by OpenFell from the summit.
Which hill this one belongs to
Great How - Eskdale Fell is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Scafell Pike (978 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 469 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
| Peak | Height | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Slight Side | 762 m | 1.6 km |
| Boat How | 337 m | 2.1 km |
| Scafell | 963.9 m | 2.7 km |
| Symonds Knott | 959.3 m | 3 km |
| Illgill Head | 608.8 m | 3 km |
| Scafell Pike | 978.1 m | 3.7 km |