Shutlingsloe.

Shutlingsloe is a hill near the village of Wildboarclough, in the east of the county of Cheshire. It stands to the south of Macclesfield Forest, on the edge of the Peak District and within the Peak District National Park.

A steep-sided hill with a distinctive profile, sometimes described as the ‘Matterhorn of Cheshire’, it is the third highest peak in the county (Shining Tor being the highest and Whetstone Ridge second highest) with an elevation of 506 m (1,660 ft), and commands excellent views over Cheshire.

The name derives from old English ‘Scyttel’s hlaw’ meaning ‘Scyttel’s (personal name) hill’ and is one of several ‘low’ names in the Peak District, from the same Old English root that gives rise to the name “Law” for many hills in southern Scotland.

The hill is constructed from alternating layers of mudstones and coarse sandstones (referred to as ‘gritstones’ or simply ‘grits’) which were laid down in a delta system in the Carboniferous period. The summit tor is formed from the Chatsworth Grit and the lower slopes from the Roaches Grit. A number of geological faults run north–west to south–east through the hill.

To find the hill you need to travel to the small village of Wildboarclough in the county of Staffordshire, and after passing through it you will come to a parking area on your right hand side after about half a mile. If you park here and then walk back down the road, after a couple of hundred yards you will see a public footpath on your right. If you follow this footpath it will lead you on a gentle walk which gets progressively steeper the nearer to Shutlingsloe you get, the last couple of hunred yards are very steep, however the effort is worth the climb as the views from the plateau on top of the hill are spectacular on a clear day.

On the top of Shutlingsloe can be found a triangulation point and also a plaque which shows other features in the landscape which can be seen from the top of this hill. On the other side of the hill can be found a pathway which leads to Macclesfield forest in the county of Cheshire. In this forest can be found a place known as Toot hill, if you have an ordnance survey map and you draw a line from Toot hill through the top of Shutlingsloe you will find that it passes through many important sites on the landscape, the purpose of this remains a mystery, however I have written about it in more detail on this website under the title “Colley Mill and the Doddyman”.