Hangman cliffs, consisting of Great Hangman and Little Hangman, are near

Combe Martin Combe Martin () is a village, Civil parishes in England, civil parish and former Manorialism, manor on the North Devon coast about east of Ilfracombe. It is a small seaside resort with a sheltered cove on the northwest edge of the Exmoor Nati ...

on the north coast of

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

, England, where

Exmoor Exmoor () is loosely defined as an area of hilly open moorland in west Somerset and north Devon in South West England. It is named after the River Exe, the source of which is situated in the centre of the area, two miles north-west of Simons ...

meets the sea. Great Hangman, with its summit at , is high with a cliff face of . It is the highest sea cliff in

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

and the highest point on the

South West Coast Path The South West Coast Path is England's longest waymarked Long-distance footpaths in the UK, long-distance footpath and a National Trail. It stretches for , running from Minehead in Somerset, along the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, to Poole Harb ...

. Little Hangman is high and overlooks the village of Combe Martin at the western boundary of Exmoor National Park. Both cliffs lie on the South West Coast Path and are in an

Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB; , AHNE) is one of 46 areas of countryside in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland that has been designated for conservation due to its significant landscape value. Since 2023, the areas in England an ...

. The cliffs are formed from a considerable thickness of sandstone known as the Hangman Grits (or more formally the Hangman Sandstone Formation) laid down during the

Devonian The Devonian ( ) is a period (geology), geologic period and system (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era during the Phanerozoic eon (geology), eon, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the preceding Silurian per ...

Period. They were subsequently folded during the

Variscan Orogeny The Variscan orogeny, or Hercynian orogeny, was a geologic mountain-building event caused by Late Paleozoic continental collision between Euramerica (Laurussia) and Gondwana to form the supercontinent of Pangaea. Nomenclature The name ''Varis ...

and the strata are seen locally to dip southwards at between 25 and 35 degrees. There is an abandoned working for

iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the f ...

below Great Hangman at Blackstone Point. No early forms of the place-name ''Hangman'' there are recorded: its first mention, as ''Hangman Hill'', was in 1792. However, there is a fanciful derivation of the name, based on a local legend. The story goes that a sheep stealer was walking over the hill carrying a stolen ewe slung over his shoulder. He stopped to rest on a rock and the struggling sheep caused the cord tied around its legs to tighten and slip round the man's neck, strangling him. In all likelihood the name ''Hangman'' is a mixture of Celtic and Germanic languages. ''Mynydd'' in Welsh means "mountain" and ''hang'' is the Germanic word for "slope". There are other examples of hills being called ''man'' from Celtic origin, e.g. Old Man of Hoy or East/West Man in Purbeck. The literal translation for ''Hangman'' would be "sloping hill".Roland Tarr, 1994, South West Coast Path: Minehead to Padstow, p. 53 In fiction, Great Hangman is part of the setting of '' Meet the Tiger'', the first in a long series of novels by

Leslie Charteris Leslie Charteris (; born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin; 12 May 1907 – 15 April 1993), was a British-Chinese author of adventure fiction, as well as a screenwriter.Simon Templar The Saint is the nickname of the fictional character Simon Templar, featured in a List of works by Leslie Charteris, series of novels and short stories by Leslie Charteris published between 1928 and 1963. After that date other authors collaborat ...

stays on Great Hangman in an abandoned World War I pillbox so he can find out about a Chicago gangster staying in Baycombe aka

References

Landforms of Devon Exmoor Cliffs of England {{Devon-geo-stub