Westerham Heights
245 metres (approximately)
804 feet
10th May 2024
Tales of the Unexpected
Today marks the first anniversary of having intentionally set out to bag a county summit. On the evening of the 10th May 2024, I ran, or rather walked, the gauntlet of incessant traffic, climbing up Westerham Hill on the A233 out of Westerham to Betsom’s Hill (the highest point in Kent).
But, for the moment it’s bonus ball time. What is the highest point in Greater London (the clue is above so don’t peek)?
Anyone familiar with London, and asked what they think is the highest point, will probably offer up The Shard. Might they be right? Just for the record, I have been up to the public observation point of The Shard, with a friend, in a snowstorm so bad you could barely make out London Bridge Station directly below, and with snow drifts forming inside the viewing platform!
The View from the Shard when the weather’s pants!
We took the lift. At that moment, some years ago now, were we at the highest point in Greater London? According to Wikipedia we were (although of course we weren’t because there were a couple more floors above). But, when I came to write up this account (and rest assured it is not an account of how my friend and I paid for tickets and then took three or four lifts to the top of The Shard in a snowstorm), something nagged away at me. Could it really be true that this tower, with its base almost at sea level, be higher than the two Crystal Palace TV transmitters set high on top of Beulah Hill and Sydenham Hill some miles to the south? Due to the almost zero visibility on the day of the Shard ascent, it was impossible to make any comparison, and trying to get any clarification from Google has proved almost impossible.
At first, and instinctively, I was prepared to trust Wikipedia, but for whatever reason I expanded my research and doubts began to creep in. To cut a long story short (I made several attempts at it, having landed on a variety of confusing and sometimes contradictory sites), I came across what appeared to be a definitive and humorous account by Bron Maher (link below). *
Working on the basis that the writer of the article comes across as sincere and impassioned, I suggest that the highest man-made elevated point in Greater London, where the eagles fly, is the Crystal Palace television tower, erected in 1957 (a rather fine year I should add) at the top of Sydenham Hill in south London. At an estimated height above sea level of 330 metres the tower is about 27 metres above the top of the Shard. Thankfully, for this exercise, I don’t have to find a way to get to the top of the Crystal Palace television transmitter, because here we are focused on the highest point of land in Greater London.
Once upon a time you could live in any part of London and consider yourself to belong to one of the established Home Counties. Surrey and Kent south of the river and Essex and Middlesex to the north (I have no editor, so you’ll just have to hope this is correct). If, say, you lived in Deptford in south-east London before 1965, and gave your address, you would have added Kent at the end. Surbiton would have been in Surrey. Hounslow would have been in Middlesex and West Ham was in Essex. Surrey cricket club play at the Oval and Middlesex play at Lords. And so forth. No matter. Times change. Scotland was once an independent country. The Greater London Authority has existed as a political entity since 1965, but you could be confused for not knowing this.
So, getting back to the core subject (apologies for earlier wormholes), if you asked most people who know London what they thought was the highest point of land in Greater London, I am pretty sure that there would be a range of opinion. Primrose Hill is trendy and wrong, but the views of London are excellent. Others, depending on their geographical bent and possible prejudices, may say Highgate Hill, Westow Hill, Ally Pally, Blackheath, Muswell Hill or perhaps even Richmond Park. But Greater London is more than location, location, location. Beyond the noticeable clay and sandstone ridges of Hampstead and Highgate in the north, and Crystal Palace and Sydenham Hill to the south, the land gently rises again, stretching out towards the suburban rim and Green Belt. In the north, parts of Enfield, Harrow and Barnet reach over 400 feet. But the big hitters, towering a whole two or three hundred feet above the north London rivals, are far to the south, and beyond the view of most Londoners.
From central London one approach could be to head directly south-east and to one of the country’s largest and possibly least known post war council estates. New Addington is the size of a small town but is largely hidden from view. Whether or not that was a deliberate decision by the planners it’s hard to say, but as a teenager who occasionally ventured up Lodge Lane to meet with friends from school, it boasted one of the largest packs of stray dogs I’ve seen anywhere, and a rather fearsome reputation for violence (not including the dogs). Those days have largely gone, but whilst on a dreary winters day it still feels like a place beyond every other place (its colloquial name is “Little Siberia”), its fringes are surrounded by farm and chalk downland. If you can navigate through the estate and exit at the south-eastern end on King Henry’s Drive, you’ll soon get to Biggin Hill, and beyond that South Street.
If you wanted a short walk to the highest point of land in Greater London, South Street might be the best place to park up (if you’ve driven). But I wouldn’t know, because I arrived at Westerham Heights from precisely the opposite direction and hadn’t a clue I had ticked it off until some months after tackling the highest point in Kent. When I was putting together the list of the highest county points (sometime after I had climbed Betsom’s Hill), it became apparent that at a point in that walk I had passed Westerham Heights by a matter of a road’s width. Located just beyond a hedge to the east of the A233, and on the opposite side of the road to Westerham Heights Farm (an obvious giveaway that passed me by on the day). If you want to read a short account of my inadvertent discovery of Westerham Heights, it’s contained in the first of these tomes, Cresting the County – Kent. **
Westerham Heights – At the orange triangle – approximately. The thick black dash/dot line marks the boundary between Greater London and Kent. The barely discernible blue trig point just below marks the highest point in Kent – Betsom’s Hill.
If you make it to the moment where a local resident points me in the direction of Betsom’s Hill, but also explains it cannot be accessed, that’s the spot. Curious that he didn’t mention the Greater London massive on his doorstep! I’m not complaining though. Two in one day and I didn’t even know it – Hey Ho!
There is a website called PeakBagger.com that I have since referenced a few times to check information, particularly on heights. Just to ensure I had indeed reached the highest point in Greater London I double checked, and in doing so noticed that the Westerham Heights link showed a few names of site members who had previously “bagged” it. It was the first time that it had dawned on me that “bagging” county tops was even a thing (I have long known that there is no such thing as original thought or action, but I was becoming increasingly aware that what I had assumed was, at best, a very niche activity, was actually a widespread pastime). I clicked on the last person to have made this trip. David Darby, an American judging by the list of 15k feet plus mountains that he had climbed, almost exclusively in North America. The highest was over 20,000 feet. At some point in his obsession, London came a calling, and he had to bag it. I wonder then what he thought when he arrived on the 19th of November 2023, having possibly travelled up through New Addington, clinging to the roadside hedges and hoping to live another second besides the 804-foot Westerham Heights. Well, I know one thing, from his records on Peak Bagger, he didn’t bag Betsom’s Hill. Poor research I reckon, particularly if you’ve come all the way from the States. Mind you, check out David Howell’s (who seems to have lived quite a life and has stratospheric ambitions), who, like me, completed the double on 2nd July 2023. The things we do…the things we do.
After cresting Greater London and Kent, and a couple of hours later, I arrived home, and soon after, for the one and only time in my life, watched in dismay the Northern Lights. Happy anniversary.
(Apologies – this scans horribly)
** https://elcolmado57.co.uk/2024/05/28/cresting-the-county-kent/
El Colmado 57 