Slieve Binnian

About Slieve Binnian

Slieve Binnian stands 9 km north of Kilkeel in County Down and is the third-highest mountain in Northern Ireland. Its summit is broad and flat, with rocky tors at the northern and southern ends and the granite towers of the Back Castles ranged between them.

The mountain lies east of the Silent Valley Reservoir and west of the Annalong Valley, and the Mourne Wall crosses it. To the south-west is Wee Binnian at 460 m, its name from the Irish Broinn Bhinneáin, 'breast of Binneán'. Administratively the hill sits in the townland of Brackenagh East Upper, the civil parish of Kilkeel and the historic barony of Mourne.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Slieve Binnian (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 Northern Ireland — local byelaws, seasonal restrictions and closures can override it. Full details: access rights in Northern Ireland · 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 54.142, -5.980. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is not recorded. On broad or flat summits the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method

Trimble GeoXH 6000

Record revised

11-Jul-23

Drop measured from

J 3201 2546 · 395.3 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.

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

The Slieve Binnian group

One other listed summit sits in the same prominence group, with Slieve Binnian as the independent hill at its head.

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