Kilmar Tor (''Cornish: Kil Margh'') is an elongated hill, high and running from SW to NE, on
Bodmin Moor in the county of
Cornwall
Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
.
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...
1:25,000 ''Explorer'' map series, No. 109 Its prominence of 118 metres qualifies it as a
HuMP
The mountains and hills of the British Isles are categorised into various lists based on different combinations of elevation, prominence, and other criteria such as isolation. These lists are used for peak bagging, whereby hillwalkers attempt ...
.
Kilmar Tor is located on the eastern side of Bodmin Moor, about 2½ kilometres WSW of the hamlet of
North Hill and 3½ kilometres north of Cornwall's highest village,
Minions. It is
surmounted by
granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...
tor
Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to:
Places
* Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain
* Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city
* Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano
* Tor Bay, Devon, England
* Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia
Sc ...
s. There is
trig point
A triangulation station, also known as a trigonometrical point, and sometimes informally as a trig, is a fixed surveying station, used in geodetic surveying and other surveying projects in its vicinity. The nomenclature varies regionally: they a ...
at the summit as well as a
cairn and
cist
A cist ( or ; also kist ;
from grc-gre, κίστη, Middle Welsh ''Kist'' or Germanic ''Kiste'') is a small stone-built coffin-like box or ossuary used to hold the bodies of the dead. Examples can be found across Europe and in the Middle Ea ...
. The course of a dismantled railway runs around the hill to the south, evidence of the mining that used to be carried out in the area.
On Kilmar Tor's northern flank is
Twelve Men's Moor with
Trewortha Tor and
Hawk's Tor beyond the saddle. To the southeast is
Bearah Tor and, to the south,
Langstone Downs.
Withy Brook runs roughly north to south past the western end of the hill and, to the east, open moorland descends to the valley of the
River Lynher
The River Lynher ( kw, Linar) (or St Germans River downstream from its confluence with the Tiddy) flows through east Cornwall, England, and enters the River Tamar at the Hamoaze, which in turn flows into Plymouth Sound.
Navigation
The nor ...
.
Popular culture
Kilmar Tor features in
Daphne du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, (; 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather was Geo ...
's novel ''
Jamaica Inn
The Jamaica Inn is a traditional inn on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall in the UK, which was built as a coaching inn in 1750, and has a historical association with smuggling. Located just off the A30, near the middle of the moor close to the hamlet ...
''.
References
{{coord, 50, 32, N, 4, 28, W, display=title, region:GB_type:mountain_source:GNS-enwiki
Hills of Cornwall
Bodmin Moor