England · Yorkshire Dales National Park

High Seat

HewittNuttallHuMPSimm

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

High Seat, 709 m, North Yorkshire/Westmorland and Furness
High Seat, 709 m, North Yorkshire/Westmorland and Furness. Photo by John Illingworth, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Height
709 m · 2,326 ft
Grid reference
NY 80207 01244
Coordinates
54.40628, -2.30644
County / area
North Yorkshire/Westmorland and Furness
OS Landranger
91 92
OS Explorer
OL19S
Summit feature
no feature: ground 20m N of cairn
Key col
SD818980 (595 m)

About High Seat

High Seat overlooks the deep trench of Mallerstang from its eastern side, and is usually climbed from there. At 709 m it is the fourth highest fell in the Yorkshire Dales after Whernside, Ingleborough and Great Shunner Fell, though with only 112 m of relative height it is not a Marilyn and can be read as a subsidiary top of Great Shunner Fell to the east.

Hugh Seat lies to the south-east; across Mallerstang to the west is the more striking Wild Boar Fell, a metre lower. Curiously, High Seat is the highest point on the main east-to-west watershed of England within the Dales, the three higher fells all sitting some way off it. The Eden, the Swale and the Ure all rise in the peat bogs here.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on High Seat (Yorkshire Dales) (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 54.406, -2.306. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Summit weather live

Loading forecast for the summit (709 m)…

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

Finding the summit

Surveyor's note

cairn is at NY 80207 01261; there are two other cairns in the summit area at NY 80264 01331 and SW NY 80161 01177.

The recorded summit point is no feature: ground 20m N of 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
23-Oct-23
Drop measured from
SD818980 · 595 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
Lady Anne's Way 155 km 2 km

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

Which hill this one belongs to

High Seat is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Great Shunner Fell (716 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 595 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
Archy Styrigg 695 m 0.9 km
Hugh Seat 688.1 m 2.3 km
Sails 666.6 m 4.7 km
Wild Boar Fell 708.4 m 5 km
Nine Standards Rigg 661.9 m 5.4 km
Great Shunner Fell 715.7 m 6.1 km