Mam Tor

About Mam Tor

Mam Tor is a 517-metre hill near Castleton in the High Peak of Derbyshire, England. Its name means 'mother hill', so called because frequent landslips on its eastern face have left a multitude of 'mini-hills' beneath it; the same slipping, caused by unstable lower layers of shale, gives it the alternative name of the Shivering Mountain.

That instability had lasting consequences for the A625 Sheffield to Chapel-en-le-Frith road: in 1979 the continual battle to maintain it on the hill's crumbling eastern side was lost and it officially closed as a through-route, the Fox House to Castleton section being redesignated the A6187.

The hill is crowned by a univallate hill fort of the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, along with two Bronze Age bowl barrows. At and near its base are four show caves — Blue John Cavern, Speedwell Cavern, Peak Cavern and Treak Cliff Cavern — where lead, Blue John, fluorspar and other minerals were once mined, and Thomas Hobbes declared Mam Tor one of the Seven Wonders of the Peak in his 1636 book De Mirabilibus Pecci.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Mam Tor (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.

Access rights here

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

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Sunset

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Daylight

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Civil twilight ends

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Computed astronomically for 53.349, -1.810. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is cobbled ground 3m NW of trig point. That distinction matters on broad or flat tops, where the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method

obvious summit

Record revised

10-Mar-07

Drop measured from

SK124834 · 455 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.

Reaching Mam Tor by train

3 National Rail stations sit within 8 km of the summit — close enough to make a car-free day of it. Distances are straight lines, not walking routes.

Each station page lists every hill in its reach, long-distance paths from the door and a live-times link — see all stations with hills in reach. Station positions from NaPTAN (OGL v3.0).

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).

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

Mam Tor is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Kinder Scout (636 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 455 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