Because it’s an active geological feature and its age it’s difficult to tell if the builders of the fort deliberately used the sheer face of the landslip to augment the defences or if the two have merged as the landslip got bigger over time. The landslip started around 4000 years ago and has slowly been collapsing into the Hope Valley facing Castleton ever since. They join with the huge landslip on the south-eastern side making it a formidable defensive position. The top of Mam Tor contains a late Bronze Age hill fort with a double set of earth defences. Depending on the intervening terrain it can be spotted from lower levels too.

You can spot it from White Edge and Froggatt Edge, much of Stanage Edge, Bamford and Derwent Edges and Kinder Scout. Whatever you prefer to call the 517m high hill it’s difficult to miss, being visible from miles around.

It’s also called the “Shivering Mountain” which I always think sounds like something out of Lord of The Rings that has a band of ice trolls living around it. Mam Tor means “mother hill” but then it didn’t take a linguistic genius to work that out did it, LOL.

Mam tor snow