The Sheep and its role in shaping Britain’s Landscape and History, Part Three

Part Three, the development of the modern day Sheep farming industry

In the final part of this 3-part series we look at how Sheep became valuable for their carcass as well as just for their wool, leading to today’s modern sheep industry.

Re-evaluating the value of a sheep

As the population of the British isles grew rapidly in the Eighteenth century, and the market for good quality cuts of Lamb and Mutton became more competitive, factors such as yield (amount of meat on a sheep) and speed of maturation (faster growing sheep) became as, if not more, important as wool yield.

This re-evaluation of the value of a sheep’s carcass as opposed to just the wool it produced became known as ‘Carcass Conformation’ and selective breeding by farmers to develop sheep with better carcasses which gave a better yield, while still retaining a good, dense, valuable fleece as well became more important.

The huge expansion and improvement of the road and canal network of the British isles in the Eighteenth century to cope with the industrial boom also helped make quality livestock available to sheep breeders all across the country for the purpose of improving their flocks.

Enclosure Acts

To accommodate the massive expansion in agriculture that went with the increasing population parliament passed ‘Enclosure Acts’ to convert land, previously classed as ‘Common land’, into improved agricultural land.

The first of these acts was passed in 1760 and this continued almost annually over the next century, as more than three million hectares of common land became enclosed. For the first time since the dissolution of the monasteries in the Sixteenth century large sheep flocks numbering hundreds to thousands of animals were established on the hills of northern Britain.

Hefting

The larger expanses of the uplands, however, were too expensive and difficult to fence, so early graziers, who appreciated that the delicate nature of the herbage on the uplands and its susceptibility to overgrazing meant that lower numbers of sheep should be kept on it for long, created the method of farming sheep, which is still in use now in Scotland, Wales, areas of the Pennines and famously in the Lake District, called ‘hefting’.

‘Hefting’ is when each area of hill is assessed for its potential stocking rate and then a sustainable number of ewes is established on the individual areas of land, which are known as ‘hefts’.

This is labour intensive but, as hill sheep are territorial by nature this instinct could be utilised and strengthened by shepherds, who replace old ewes with ewe lambs from the same heft each year, so that the knowledge of grazing territories is passed from mother to daughter. The sheep of hefted hill flocks today are the direct descendants of those sheep breeds established 300 years ago and graze exactly the same ground now as they have always done.

Local breeds

By the 1840s and for the next hundred years or so, it became possible to travel the length and breadth of Britain and recognise each county by the characteristics of its sheep breeds; the big Romneys of Kent, the close-wools of the Home Counties and Welsh borders, the long-wools of the Midlands and north, and the horned, coarse-wooled hill sheep of Exmoor, Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumberland, such as Lonks, Dales-bred, Rough Fell and Swaledale.

The grey Herdwick thrived, and is still popular, in the Lake District and hardy Blackface sheep are still archetypal throughout the heather-clad uplands and Highlands of Scotland. Wales and the Scottish Borders have their native polled hill sheep, such as the Hill Radnor, White, Black and Balwen Welsh Mountain, Clun Forest, Beulah, Badger face and Cheviot. And farther north can be found the North Country Cheviots of Sutherland and Caithness.

Modern day sheep farming

Most, if not all, of these native breeds of sheep that were developed over 300 to 400 years ago still have strong followings, and farms with pedigree flocks of them are still found in the regions they were bred to graze.

Some have dropped out of favour over the years, but recently there has been a resurgence, almost a fashion, in keeping and breeding native breeds of sheep, and butchers and wholesalers have encouraged this.

Possibly this is because they have found that an increased variation in the products they sell, and the ability to call it ‘local’, so capitalising on the recent idea that this must equate to better quality and taste for some reason, can be very profitable indeed, so nowadays you can find farmers markets selling a huge, almost bewildering, array of locally produced Lamb under all sorts of names, when only a few years ago it was just sold under one word; ‘Lamb’.

Our hill sheep might be the same breeds as they have been for hundreds of years, and many flocks of regional breeds now exist but for commercial sheep farmers the half breed now predominates and farmers are endlessly experimenting to find ewes that will suit their land and way of doing things, so new breeds of sheep will no doubt be created in the future.

A B-H