Hangman cliffs, consisting of Great Hangman and Little Hangman, are near
Combe Martin on the north coast of
Devon, England, where
Exmoor meets the sea.
Great Hangman, with its summit at , is high with a cliff face of . It is the highest sea cliff in
England and the highest point on the
South West Coast Path
The South West Coast Path is England's longest waymarked long-distance footpath and a National Trail. It stretches for , running from Minehead in Somerset, along the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, to Poole Harbour in Dorset. Because it rises a ...
.
Little Hangman is high and overlooks the village of Combe Martin at the western boundary of Exmoor National Park. Both cliffs lie on the South West Coast Path and are in an
Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The cliffs are formed from a considerable thickness of sandstone known as the Hangman Grits (or more formally the
Hangman Sandstone Formation) laid down during the
Devonian
The Devonian ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic era, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the Silurian, million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Carboniferous, Mya. It is named after Devon, England, whe ...
Period. They were subsequently folded during the
Variscan Orogeny and the strata are seen locally to dip southwards at between 25 and 35 degrees. There is an abandoned working for
iron ore
Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the fo ...
below Great Hangman at Blackstone Point.
No early forms of the place-name ''Hangman'' there are recorded: its first mention, as ''Hangman Hill'', was in 1792. However, there is a fanciful derivation of the name, based on a local legend. The story goes that a sheep stealer was walking over the hill carrying a stolen ewe slung over his shoulder. He stopped to rest on a rock and the struggling sheep caused the cord tied around its legs to tighten and slip round the man's neck, strangling him.
In all likelihood the name ''Hangman'' is a mixture of Celtic and Germanic languages. ''Mynydd'' in Welsh means "mountain" and ''hang'' is the Germanic word for "slope". There are other examples of hills being called ''man'' from Celtic origin, e.g. Old Man of Hoy or East/West Man in Purbeck. The literal translation for ''Hangman'' would be "sloping hill".
[Roland Tarr, 1994, South West Coast Path: Minehead to Padstow, p. 53]
In fiction, Great Hangman is part of the setting of ''
Meet the Tiger'', the first in a long series of novels by
Leslie Charteris featuring "The Saint".
Simon Templar stays on Great Hangman in an abandoned World War I pillbox so he can find out about a Chicago gangster staying in Baycombe aka
Combe Martin.
References
Landforms of Devon
Exmoor
Cliffs of England
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