I always thought Nine Standards Rigg to the east of Kirkby Stephen was
a Victorian Folly. It seems not from this email received on my
website. "Dear Sir, A beautiful site indeed; many congratulations, and
I hope your site visitors do get up onto the fells to see these
wonderful places for themselves, as I have since I was a boy in the
1940s. This is just to say that the Nine Standards are not as you say
a nineteenth century folly; they have been used as the border between
Yorkshire and Westmorland since at least 1220 AD, and were at various
times the border between Scotland and England, and indeed their
predecessor political entities before that. I have so far assembled 21
perambulations (ie manorial border demarcations) carried out by the
various secular lords of the manors of Swaledale on one side and
Kirkby Stephen and Brough on the other side of the border between the
thirteenth century and 1862 when the First Edition OS Six Inch map was
issued, all of which specifically mention the Nine Standards as well
as some of the other high fells you show in your list of hills worth
visiting (such as Lovely Seat, Shunner Fell etc). I am still locating
other references to them, and anticipate extending the series to the
pre-Conquest millennium in the near future. I say this to give you the
opportunity to amend your text, should you so wish. The Nine Standards
have certainly been with us for the last 800 years, and in my view for
very much longer; exactly how much longer is the subject of research
currently under way"
So can we establish the real truth?