Abstract
Mam Tor, the so-called ‘shivering mountain’, frowns down on the village of Castleton. Like Alport Castles (site 11), which lie further to the north, it consists of a grit escarpment, of which the upper parts are being undermined by the removal of the softer shales below. The grits are constantly falling and slipping, creating the shivering effect that made Mam Tor one of the original ‘wonders of the Peak’, and gave rise to its name. According to Daniel Defoe, the 18th century traveller, Mam Tor ‘in mountain jargon signifies, the Mother Rock, upon a suggestion that the soft crumbling earth, which falls from the summit of the one, breeds or begets several young mountains below’.
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© 1992 A. S. Goudie and R. A. M. Gardner
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Goudie, A., Gardner, R. (1992). Mam Tor: the ‘shivering mountain’. In: Discovering Landscape in England & Wales. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2298-6_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2298-6_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-0-412-47850-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-2298-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive