The Humps
Humps are hills of any height with a drop of 100 metres or more on all sides The name Hump stands for HUndred Metre Prominence.
By definition, all Marilyns qualify as Humps (but not vice versa).
A Subhump is a hill which just fails (by up to 10m) to
qualify on the drop rule, i.e. drop of 90m to 99m on all sides.
Change Register - registry of changes to the Humps list.
(Humps appear as Class=Hu on this website, or Ma if also a Marilyn, and Subhumps appear as Class=sHu).
The official e-book listing all the Humps, compiled by Mark Jackson, is now available for free download:
More Relative Hills of Britain
My Progress
I have completed 0 (0%)
of 2979 Humps of Britain [Map *]
0 (0%)
of 2164 Scottish Humps [Map *]0 (0%)
of 440 English Humps [Map *]0 (0%)
of 367 Welsh Humps [Map *]0 (0%)
of 11 Manx Humps [Map *]0 (0%)
of 831 Irish Humps [Map *]The discrepancy in the totals is due to 3 hills on the Scotland/England border which
are included in the totals for both countries.
(* please note that map may be slow to load)
League Table - compare your progress with other members
of this site.
Humps by Topographical Area
Click on a hill total on the list below to show the Mountain Search page for Humps in the corresponding topographical area.
The 1033 High Hills of Britain by Alan Dawson.
Mountain Search page.
Brief history and Acknowledgements
The original source for the Humps list was Dr Eric Yeaman's "Handbook of the Scottish Hills", published by Wafaida in 1989. In the
introduction the author states:
"For the purposes of this Handbook, a hill is defined as an eminence which
has an ascent of 100m all round or, failing that, is at least 5km (walking
distance) from any higher point on neighbouring hills."
In an attempt to clarify this list, Bernie Hughes set out to mirror the methodology that had produced the TACit Press "New Donalds"
from Percy Donald's original set, by removing Yeamans qualifying by distance alone, and applying a strict 100m height / 100m prominence rule.
Drop figures were obtained either from published sources such as TACit Tables where available, or from direct comparison of the 1:50,000
and 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey maps. The results were referred to as "New Yeamans".
Iain Cameron had previously produced an Excel spreadsheet of the hills in Yeaman's book, using the original publication's 4-figure
Grid Refs. Rob Woodall converted these to 6-figure Grid Refs, added drop data and suggested a few deletions e.g. where hills fell
short of the 5km distance rule. Clem Clements had applied Yeaman's original criteria to England and Wales, and christened the results
"Yeomans". Rob Woodall combined these data sources, and the results were amalgamated and uploaded to the RHB Yahoo community in the
Spring of 2007.
The name "Humps" (Hundred Metre Prominence) was originally proposed by Mark Jackson and unanimously accepted by the
RHB community . This data
was subsequently reworked and republished in a more accessible and attractive format by Mark in the summer of 2007, giving an
initial total of 2991 Humps. An early spate of promotions and demotions raised the total to 2993. Mark Jackson also initiated
the Hall of Fame for those climbing 1200+ Humps, in imitation of Alan Dawson's 600+ Marilyns Hall of Fame. Anybody wishing to join the
Hump Hall of Fame should contact Chris Watson at hof@rhsoc.uk
(By Bernie Hughes and Rob Woodall)
My thanks to Jim Bloomer and Clem Clements for their painstaking research into the Irish Humps, and
making their data available to this website.
