Folk have been been burying things in the ground, with ropes attached to them to form anchors, for centuries. The Vikings,for example, buried logs in the sand to anchor their longships when they came ashore. Quite how such anchors got to be called ‘deadmen’ we are not sure, though the word does conjure up a picture of some hapless corpse being put to a final use!

Scottish mountaineer, John Cunningham, is widely credited as being one of the first to use small sheets of metal/aluminium to make anchors in the snow for climbers, having used a similar piece of wood to anchor dog teams in Antarctica. A guy called Denny Moorehouse perfected the idea and began production in his Clog Factory down in Wales in the 1960s. This lends a certain irony to the Deadman we have here in the collection since it’s made by DMM – Denny Moorehouse Mountaineering – Denny’s new company.

So, 50 odd years on and we have a Deadman made by the same guy who made the originals. This one is unused and in mint condition and it was kindly donated by one of our trustees, Chris Robinson.