Don Baker <bakerdon(a)iafrica.com> wrote:
We enjoyed the video "The Englishman who went up a hill but came down a
mountain" recently. Is there any factual basis for the story, and can
one visit the actual hill [sorry, Mountain] used in the film?
Could someone pse give a map reference for the 1002 ft protrusion.
================
Hi Don,
A recent search on the Internet using
www.google.com located some
reliable information which may answer your question about the possible
factual basis for the story of the "Englishman who.... (etc.)".
I've copied the info under my signature below.
My Ordnance Survey Landranger (sheet 171) shows the summit of "Garth
Hill" to be at grid reference ST103835 and its height to be 307 metres
(1007 feet) above sea level.
Cheers,
John
----------------------------------
John Ball, South Wales, UK
E-mail: wfha(a)clara.co.uk
Welsh Family History Archive (WFHA):
http://home.clara.net/wfha/wales/index.htm
=========================
This letter by Ed Sullivan of Visalia, California appeared in
"Professional Surveyor", Nov./ Dec. 1998, discussing the whimsical movie
(and book) The Englishman Who Went up a Hill but Came down a Mountain:
The story, which concerned Welsh villagers building up the local
mountain to the required 1000 feet so that English surveyors who had
previously measured it and called it a hill would record it as a
mountain, purportedly was based upon a true incident. I was going to
Wales in July 1998 and decided it would be interesting to locate the
village, find the mountain and climb it.
Ffynnon Garw was a fictional name. The real village is Taff's Well
(Ffynnon Taf in Welsh), and the mountain is Garth Mountain.
Writer/Director Christopher Monger was born in Taff's Well and had heard
the story from his grandfather and other villagers. (The filming of the
movie was not made at Taff's Well. That area, near Cardiff, was too
built up to portray village life in 1917. The actual filming was done in
northern Wales at Llanrhaeadr-yn-Mochnant, located 10 miles west of
Owestry.)
Garth Mountain and Taff's Well are located six miles northwest of
Cardiff. I visited the library in Taff's Well. The librarian was both
interested and helpful. She gave me a copy of the book and a copy of the
only large-scale map available, which was a 1921 edition of the Ordnance
survey of the area. Following the librarian's directions, I climbed the
mountain. It was an easy climb because a road went part way up. At the
top there clearly was a mound of dirt, and on top of the mound was a
concrete marker that appeared to be a surveyor's triangulation station.
In some ways, the book was more interesting and satisfactory than the
movie because the book could include more details than is possible in a
movie. The movie never shows any actual measurements being taken of the
mountain. However, the book describes three successive measurements of
the mountain, which will be of interest to surveyors. In the first
measurement, the surveyors used a clinometer and stepped-off distances,
from which the elevation was calculated. They acknowledged this method
was lacking in accuracy. In the second measurement they used barometers.
This was less than successful because a low-pressure front flowed
through the area, causing the base barometer to change while the
observing barometer was carried to the top. The third measurement was
made by triangulation with two nearby peaks for which the elevation was
known. I wonder how accurate that was.
The villagers were suspicious of the English surveyors. One villager
asks, "I don't see that it's possible. How will they measure it?" The
other responds, "And what would they be doing with it once they've got
it?" The first one responds, "By God, that's the worry of it." That
remark leads to the conclusion, "The English come only when they want
something."
The Reverend Jones speculated in his mind on the philosophy and practice
of map-making. "The most innocent maps were concerned with helping one
from place to place. The English already had those - They'd found a way
here hadn't they? No, they didn't need new maps for that. The more the
Reverend pondered the subject the more he concluded that maps, by and
large, were made for less than altruistic purposes: maps were made to
define the borders of property, more for reasons of exclusion than
inclusion. Maps were to measure properties for taxation. Maps were made
to define borders and thus became more and more important in times of
war. Moreover, he had heard that these men, these Englishmen, were from
His Majesty's Ordnance Survey. Apart from 'His Majesty' there was
another term in that title the Reverend didn't like: ordnance. Wasn't
that a synonym for bombs and ammunition? The more the reverend thought
about it the more suspicious he became."
In the end the villagers prevailed; they delayed the departure of the
surveyors and raised the mountain. It was a good book and a good movie.
Monger, in the epilogue to the book, says that about five years after
the event there was a new edition of the map, which showed "Ffynnon Garw
Mountain - 1002 feet." Soon all the villagers had a copy in their homes.
It is a good thing they did not see the 1921 edition (which is in the
library). It says "Garth Hill - elevation 1000 feet." Although that is
the 1921 edition, the small print says the leveling was revised in 1899
and partly revised in 1915.
My review of this matter is not really complete. I did not have time to
locate the most recent large scale map of the area. I wonder what
elevation it shows . . .
=================
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