Illgill Head
6 classifications here — Marilyn, HuMP, Simm, 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
- 608.8 m · 1,997 ft
- Prominence
- 312.2 m
- Grid reference
- NY 16898 04924
- Coordinates
- 54.43293, -3.28263
- County / area
- Cumberland
- Region
- Lake District C&W
- OS Landranger
- 89
- OS Explorer
- OL6N
- Summit feature
- rock
- Key col
- NY 1829 0555 (296.6 m)
About Illgill Head
Illgill Head runs along the south-eastern shore of Wastwater, the deepest lake in England, and is better known to most people as the northern part of the Wastwater Screes than by its own name.
The fell reaches 609 m and is listed as a Wainwright, Marilyn, HuMP, Simm, Birkett, Synge and Fellranger.
Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Illgill Head (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 54.433, -3.283. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.
Summit weather live
Loading forecast for the summit (609 m)…
Forecast adjusted to summit altitude. Weather data from MET Norway (CC BY 4.0).
Finding the summit
higher by 0.5m than rock by windshelter at NY16905 05025; rock 30m SW at NY 16874 04908 is 0.04m lower.
The recorded summit point is rock. That distinction matters on broad or flat tops, where the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.
- Survey method
- Leica NA730/Leica GS15
- Record revised
- 10-Apr-21
- Drop measured from
- NY 1829 0555 · 296.6 m
Classification history: Wainwright summit is a cairn at NY 16544 04803 which is at least 3m lower than true summit.
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 Illgill Head group
3 other listed summits sit in the same prominence group, with Illgill Head as the independent hill at its head.
| Summit | Height | Drop |
|---|---|---|
| Whin Rigg (Wasdale) | 537 m | 59 m |
| Boat How | 337 m | 78 m |
| Irton Pike | 229 m | 25 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Boat How | 337 m | 1.7 km |
| Whin Rigg (Wasdale) | 537 m | 2.3 km |
| Middle Fell | 582 m | 2.9 km |
| Buckbarrow | 423 m | 3.5 km |
| Yewbarrow | 628.7 m | 3.6 km |
| Scafell | 963.9 m | 4.1 km |