The Boys' Brigade Mountaineering Club

Ill Crag is the 4th highest peak in England. It was long thought not to be a separate peak. Wainwright failed to list it as such in his Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells. But its prominence of 57 m, does qualify it as a Hewitt and hence, it is now counted as a 3,000 ft peak. Historically, it was one of the Scawfell Pikes and, like the peak we now call Scafell Pike, would not have had its own name. When a name was required, it was named after Ill Crags, the steep crags on its south west flank, overlooking Little Narrowcove.

See its entries on Walkhighlands or Wikipedia or view it from above on Google Earth.

Ill comes from Illr (Old Norse), which means Evil, Unpleasing or Ugly. In the context of a mountain name, it could be taken to mean Steep, Precipitous, Rough or Treacherous. Perhaps Forbidingly Steep is the best translation, given the gradient of the crags. Crag came from a Celtic word (possibly Welsh or Cumbric) equivalent to the Modern Welsh word Craig (Creic in Old Welsh, Craic in Middle Welsh), which means Rock and which has since been transliterated from Welsh or Cumbric into Middle English as Cragge and found its way into Modern English as Crag.

Cumbric, like Welsh, evolved from the Common Brittonic language and was spoken during the Early Middle Ages in Yr Hen Ogledd (The Old North) in what is now Northern England and southern Lowland Scotland. The name Cumbria is actually a latinised version of the word Welsh speakers use to describe their own country (Cymru). Cumbric is closely related to Old Welsh, but is thought to have become extinct in the 12th century. For more information on Celtic languages, see Virtual Linguistics.

So Ill Crag probably simply means Forbidingly Steep Crag.