Talk:Steel Knotts

Is Pikeawassa a tor? The reference to Pikeawassa as a tor is incorrect, and so I have replaced it with the term "a steep rocky pinnacle".

As a technical term, tor is found in geological works always with reference to granite tors, a landform that has been created through the un-roofing of granite rock that had previously been intruded into rocks beneath the surface. For example, see Arthur Holmes, Principles of Physical Geology, London: Thomas Nelson, 1965 (1944), p 615; Peter Toghill, Geology of Britain, Airlife Publishing, 2000, p 178, and Graham Park, Introducing Tectonics, Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2012, p 42.

As a non-technical term, the word tor is sometimes applied to rocky outcrops on the summits of hills, but this usage seems to be confined to south west England, where the granite tors of Dartmoor are well known. Glastonbury Tor is one example.

Pikeawassa is not a granite tor. It is actually a deposit of dacitic lapilli-tuff. And the word tor is not used in Cumbria, in spite of its possible Celtic origin. Pikeawassa (peak on Wat's hill?) is not a tor in Cumbria but a pike, from Old English pīc, a peak. To use a 'foreign' term from the other end of England adds nothing to the information being given, and probably misleads the reader because of the technical use of the term.

Silence-is-infinite (talk) 10:28, 12 March 2014 (UTC)