Pendle Hill

For hundreds of years, Pendle Hill has been a natural playground offering room for rest and recuperation for the hard-working folk of East Lancashire. Pendle’s wild expanses and exhilarating views change perspectives and inspire people to look at the world in new ways.

Pendle Hill has been such a prominent feature in the landscape that in the 12,000 years since people have been drawn here, those living in its shadow named it three times.

Originally, the hill was referred to by ancient Britons as ‘pen’, simply meaning ‘hill’ in the Iron Age Brittonic language spoken in Lancashire during the First Millennium AD.

In the 12th or 13th centuries, the Anglo-Saxons added their word for hill, renaming it ‘Penhul’, which over time became written and spoken as ‘Pendle’.

More recently, as the origins of the original name were forgotten, the word Hill was again added as a suffix. So the words Pendle Hill actually translate as ‘hill, hill, hill’.

Pendle is one of the most popular hills to climb in the whole of Lancashire and there are at least seven routes to the summit.