Talk:List of Wainwrights

Older comments
I have altered Sail to Sail because it doesn't make any sense for it to link to a page on sailing. There may be others with strange links Paul Tracy And there were - Yoke, Barf, High Street.

Hi. I just noticed that one of the fells under "The Outlying Fells", called The Knott, links to a Far Eastern Fell. User:freddyj66 Thanks, now dabbed. Bobble Hat 07:46, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Just noticed that Book 1 the Map for 32 Stone Arhur and 33 Gowbarrow are the wrong way roundPhilotheringer (talk) 18:09, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Book One: The Eastern Fells - 12 High Crag. This fell is not in Book one. This error has thrown all the following fells out of order by one i.e. there are 35 fells in Book One not 36 as indicated. Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.69.233.186 (talk) 22:46, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Tidying up this article
Have added an article on List of Birketts in the Lake District and want to synchronize with this article (209 of the 214 Wainwrights are Birketts). Some of the references in the lede are old so trying to fix these. Am going to add a full current table on all 214 Wainwrights (as per Birketts) but will maintain the current tables by Book as they are so well done (doesn't matter so much if some of the metrics have changed as the list of Wainwrights is fixed). One idea that I would propose is to merge this article with the Outlying Fells of Lakeland, which is a very nice article but merging would create a good comprehensive wiki on Wainwrights? It would also avoid confusion regarding the two different types of Wainwrights, and they can share each other's graphics? Britishfinance (talk) 17:05, 12 October 2018 (UTC)


 * No, please do not merge with The Outlying Fells of Lakeland. They are two different categories of summits: most people wanting to do "The Wainwrights" are not interested in the Outlying fells. The Outlying fells book has a different structure, being made up of 56 walks most of which include several summits while the maim 7 books have a chapter per summit, usually including several different routes of ascent. Merging would not be useful. Pam  D  13:28, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay, I hear the point you are making but the two articles seem very disconnected for lists of hills in a similar area. For example, most of these are all classed as Birketts, another popular classification, so there is some connection here?  The DoBIH, who think a lot about these things, class them as W, and WO.  The Wainwrights have another longer article on the actual book (which is lovely), however, the Outlying Fells don't, which might be the problem (book and hills in the same article)?
 * Another question, I have put in two DoBIH tables with updated W and WO measurements (amazing how even these measurements move around for hills that are less frequently surveyed), and I have discovered how to automatically link the entries to individual wikis. I could add an extra column in both these tables showing the book (in the case of W) and walk (in the case of WO)?  However, that would make the existing two tables in the two articles redundant?  Instead, I could create a new article (with a mountain infobox etc.) that had these two tables, and leave the existing articles to being focused on the books (e.g. like the List of Donald mountains in Scotland article I have just done).  Ultimately, I am trying to improve the lists of mountains (updated metrics etc.), and put them in articles that are easily searchable. Britishfinance (talk) 13:49, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I wonder if there's a way to make the tables more compact - even on my laptop I have to scroll the table across the page (I use a window which is narrower than the whole screen), but an increasing amount of wikipedia readers are on phones, tablets, etc. I don't know whether it's possible to do something to reduce the width of a heading, so that the whole column can be narrower - eg the first col has maximum 3 digits but is wide enough for "Height" and the sorting arrow. I think the separate table in the "Outlying fells" article works well, accounts for the different structure of the book (but then I created it, with help, years ago, so naturally I like it that way!). Not sure what happens to the several "nameless summit"s when they get into DBIH- would be interesting to check. Pam  D  14:30, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah-ha! See Help:Table and Vert header. Might be worth a try. Pam  D  14:32, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Good spot - lets do that. The DoBIH seperate out the nameless summits and given their alternative names (e.g. if it is in a horseshoe etc.) so was able to link their respective wiki article (by hand, in their case).Britishfinance (talk) 14:46, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Inclusion Criteria
The second paragraph states "Wainwright did not state any rules about what should be included in his guides." This is not true. Wainwright was very specific. He defined an area based on the lakes themselves rather than the National Park borders and included all separate summits within that area over 1000 feet. He also declared one exception, Castle Crag. Unfortunately I no longer have my copy of the guides so I cannot provide a definitive statement. The statement on inclusion criteria is repeated in the introduction to all books of the series. A Wainwright was a 'rules' man and no-one who has read his books could believe that he would include or exclude fells on a whim. (Okay, we forgive him Castle Crag.) If he didn't have strict, well defined rules then he would surely have excluded Armboth Fell and Mungrisdale Common. OrewaTel (talk) 23:09, 1 February 2020 (UTC)


 * In the introductions to the books, Wainwright defines the boundaries of the area in question, but says nothing about the rules for inclusion. There's no mention of a 1000-foot criterion in the introduction. In the chapter on Castle Crag, he does mention that it is the only hill below 1000 feet that is given 'the full treatment', but I read this as an incidental comment rather than anything to do with a rule.


 * If there are rules, they don't seem to be based on topography. Take Pavey Ark as an example: "In a strict geographical sense the crag is the eastern boundary of Thunacar Knott, to which the ground above the crag gradually rises. But the Ark ...[various compliments to Pavey Ark]...quite puts to shame the top of the main fell. At the risk of offending Thunacar Knott, Pavey Ark must have a chapter to itself." There seems to be a clear subjective judgement here. Another example is Stone Arthur, where there seems to be no clear summit at all but which looks like a peak from the valley.


 * I agree that the inclusion of low-quality hills such as Armboth Fell is a puzzle and suggests that there is a topographical criterion. But there is a non-Wainwright summit a short way south of Armboth Fell, altitude 558m (grid ref 298143) which, compared to Armboth Fell, is 90 metres higher, has a greater topographical prominence, and is further from the nearest other Wainwright. It's hard to imagine a mathematical rule that excludes this summit and includes Armboth Fell. Mind you, it's hard to think of an aesthetic one either, as this hill is also steeper and rockier than Armboth Fell!


 * Wainwright may have been a rules man (I'm not so sure), but the books are also full of humour, and I have sometimes wondered if Armboth Fell was included as a deadpan joke.


 * Wainwright did seem to have a clear idea about what constitute the boundaries of fells, namely watercourses, and sometimes makes statements about whether a given hill has a footing in the valley (if its boundary streams converge before reaching the valley, it doesn't). I have sometimes tried (idly) to see if a stream-based rule was used to parcel up the area into separate fells, but it doesn't seem to work. Macboff (talk) 07:36, 26 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Point taken. I seem to remember the rules being specified in the Mungrisdale Common chapter when he said that the only reason to include it was completeness. At the end of the last book there was a discursive article on the series. I will have to get hold of another copy of the books and see where I got these ideas from actually. (The word 'actually' has been added to prevent the sentence from ending with a preposition and that is something that no sentence should end with. Bless you AW!) OrewaTel (talk) 03:00, 27 July 2020 (UTC)


 * OrewaTel wrote: "The word 'actually' has been added to prevent the sentence from ending with a preposition and that is something that no sentence should end with." That's a quote from somewhere in the books, isn't it! :-) 😊


 * I've had a (quick) look at the places you mention and couldn't spot anything. But some hill being included "for completeness" does ring a bell. I'm glad he did include some of the more marginal cases - I was alone on Mungrisdale Common in dry weather last summer and it was an utterly delightful place to be! Macboff (talk) 14:03, 27 July 2020 (UTC)


 * We had better leave it until I get some more copies. Of course the statement might be in one of his other books. Or maybe I have a better imagination than memory. OrewaTel (talk) 06:08, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Problematic prominences
An alert IP using the name of "Justan Otheranon Hillwalker" has pointed out at User_talk:Britishfinance that the prominence figures given in the "Wainwrights by Height" table for all the non-Birkett Wainwrights are wrong! The "prominence in meters" figure was actually the height in feet, the "prominence in feet" was that figure converted to metres, leading to some extraordinary numbers - which no-one has noticed for five years. Unfortunately, who created these tables and various others from Database of British and Irish Hills, hasn't edited for two years, so we can't ask them to fix the problem.

There are only 5 non-Birkett Wainwrights, and the figures for Castle Crag were OK. I think I have corrected the 2 prominence figures for each of the other 4 non-Birkett Wainwrights, disobeying the instruction that the table should never be edited unless using a totally new download from DBIH.

The Outlying Fells are another problem: there are about 60 Birketts, so 56 non-Birketts, so 56 fells to check in the database, 56 metre prominences to convert, 112 numbers to correct. I could try to fix them some time but not right now.

In case my changes have done anything wrong to the main table, I have included a comment "See talk" beside each number I corrected.

Does anyone have the data manipulation skills to refresh these tables in their entirety, I wonder, in the absence of their original creator? Does anyone care about them? The page views suggest that quite a few people look at the page, but the fact that no-one has noticed the dodgy prominences is ... interesting, let's say.

I've left a message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Lancashire and Cumbria to see if anyone can help out, and messages pointing to that one on the other relevant Wikiproject talk pages. Pam D  21:39, 12 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Commenting to keep this from being archived, and to nudge anyone on whose watchlist this is. I think I might some time get round to making the 112 changes outlined above unless some other kind soul does so before me. Pam  D  14:01, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * And here, an hour later, job done. I added prominence in metres from current DoBIH / Hill Bagging, blanked the field for prominence in feet because DoBIH doesn't give it, and it's pretty redundant. Anyone wanting it can calculate it by a conversion, anyone wanting to sort by prominence can use the metres figure. Anyone wanting to convert and add it for each of the 56 is of course welcome to do so. A handful of fells had different heights in the current DoBIH so I corrected them, sourcing to it. Pam  D  15:03, 12 April 2024 (UTC)