Scafell ( or ; also spelled Sca Fell, previously Scawfell) is a mountain in the Lake District region of Cumbria, England. It has a height of , making it the second-highest mountain in England after its neighbour, Scafell Pike, from which it is separated by Mickledore col.
Topography
Scafell stands between Wasdale in the west and upper Eskdale to the east. The highest part of the fell is a ridge running south from Mickledore as far as Slight Side, which is counted as a separate fell by most guidebooks. Despite regarding Slight Side as a separate entity, Wainwright included the wide upland area beyond it to the south west as a part of Scafell. More modern guides have partitioned the plateau off as a further independent top, Great How. The second breach in the crags is Broad Stand, a series of sloping steps which drop down from Symonds Knott almost to Mickledore; however, these steepen immediately above Mickledore and cannot be negotiated safely except by rock-climbers.
Summit
The main summit bears a large cairn on a short rocky ridge. Northward is a saddle, marked by a large cross of stones and then the bouldery climb to Symonds Knott, the north top. This gives views straight down to Mickledore. Scafell gives a very different view to that from its higher neighbour with Wastwater and the coastal plain given great prominence. There is a fine vista of the Western Fells, together with Bowfell and the Coniston Fells.<!-- This could be linked to a Wikipedia article about the British Newspaper Archive - but a useful article does not exist - The BNA is an online resource of images of newspapers in the British Library. These have been transcribed for search purposes by Optical Character Recognition - so giving an enormously powerful searchable database (despite the obvious problems of OCR of old material of variable quality). The full article on Sca Fell is probably not the place to explain the relative authority of thousands of examples in newspapers versus a few maps and guidebooks - there is certainly a much larger statistical significance (and its a lot easier to gather the data, though skim reading 3,500 newspaper articles takes some effort). It is intended that this work will be analysed by a professional statistician, once it can be organised.--> This was used by, among others William Wordsworth who, in addition to poetry, wrote a popular guide book to the Lake District, Harriet Martineau (whose work replaced Wordsworth's as the definitive guidebook), Jonathan Otley (who was one of the first to measure the height of most of the Lakeland fells), John Dalton (who also estimated the elevation of many of the fells), the surveyor of the Wasdale Head Enclosure map of 30 January 1808 and the hotel keepers and tour operators who lived or operated in the area, as typified by the many adverts in M. J. B. Baddeley's guide of 1895 (versus the guide text which was consistent with the maps therein). This split between local usage and maps printed by national publishers is further illustrated by the Wasdale Hall Estate Plan and Sales Particulars, dated 30th Sept 1920. The phonetic "Scawfell" was still noticeably in use in the 1950s.
The change to the shorter spelling appears to have originated in the Donald Map of 1774, a document with a noticeable number of placename errors. This was then perpetuated by the Ordnance Survey from 1867. The Donald map is the first to name many mountains in the Lake District - earlier maps concentrated on showing passes through the mountains. Until 1867 the two spellings are roughly equally split on maps, the shorter form being more common with London publishers. General usage at the time was predominantly "Scawfell". The only notable guide book that used "Scafell" prior to 1867 is Ford. The Ordnance Survey produced detailed procedures on capturing correct placenames in 1825, largely as a result of their survey work transferring to Ireland between 1824 and 1838. However, when they restarted their work in England, given the status of Sca Fell as an essential surveying station (taking bearings of Slieve Donard and Snowdon, thereby helping to fix the relative positions of Ireland and England), the familiarity with this mountain probably meant that the "Name Book" procedures were overlooked. Hence the correct enquiries were not made and the mistake of Donald was perpetuated.
Wainwright stated that, originally, the name Scawfell/Scafell referred to the whole of the massif from Great End south to Slight Side; only more recently had the general term become applied solely to the part of the fell south of Mickledore. Wainwright's comments on this in book 4: "When men first named the mountains, the whole of the high mass south of Sty Head was known as Scaw Fell....".
Scafell Pike and Scafell were referred to by the Ordnance Survey in their 1811 report as "Sca-Fell Higher Top" and "Sca-Fell Lower Top". This can be confirmed from the 1811 account, a modern map and some elementary trigonometry. .
Once Scafell Pike (which has its own convoluted name history) had been identified as England's highest mountain, that fact and the greater interest in climbing and fell-walking necessitated the Scafell Range being broken down into a number of individually named elements. This process was completed before the death of Jonathan Otley in 1856, as Otley commented on this change.
It was once believed that Scafell was the highest mountain in this part of the Lake District – it is much more prominent in views from many directions than its higher neighbour – with the three apparently inferior peaks to the north (those now known as Scafell Pike, Ill Crag and Broad Crag) being known collectively as the "Pikes of Scawfell". Dorothy Wordsworth did discover shortly after her ascent of "The Pikes" (Scafell Pike) in 1818 that this peak was higher than Sca Fell - presumably from Otley's map and guide book.
Gallery
<Gallery>
File:Scafell massif winter.jpg|Scafell massif from Middle Fell.
File:Scafells.jpg|Scafell massif from Middle Fell
File:Lords' rake scafell in snow 2010.jpg|Lords Rake, Scafell, Cumbria - 2010
File:Scafell crag in snow.jpg|Scafell Crag, Cumbria, from the north, 2010
File:Scafell from scafell pike in snow 2010.jpg|Scafell from Scafell Pike, - 2010.
File:Scafell broadstand in snow 2010.jpg|Detail in snow of Broadstand, Scafell, Cumbria - 2010
File:Scafell crag lords rake.jpg|Scafell Crag with Lord's Rake on the left.
File:Ascent to mickledore scafell.jpg|The ascent from Wasdale to Mickledore (on the right)
File:Scafell botterills slab.jpg|Botterill's slab on Scafell Crag, first climbed in 1903.
</gallery>