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An integral part of dale life
Dec 5, 2007
SHEEP are part of Teesdale. We are so used to their being around that we hardly give them a second glance. However, if they all disappeared we would soon see a difference.
It is thought that sheep make our moors. Without them the higher slopes of our dale would probably be covered with thorn bushes and small trees with a lot of undergrowth.
For hundreds of years, small highland sheep grazed our uplands. They were about the size of smallish dog - much smaller than our Swaledales are today. However, they did have horns and the tups had curly ones.
The upland sheep provided dales people with meat, wool, leather, horn and fat, as well as milk for making cheese. In other words every part of the sheep could be used.
The sheep actually produced more wool than was needed in the dale so it was a source of income.
In fact, fleeces of wool were an important export - wool was big business. In the Middle Ages more than a million fleeces from the North were exported each year from Hull alone.
It was wool that inspired one of the weirdest methods of indirect taxation yet invented.
Mind you, don't hold your breath: who knows - breathing might be the next thing taxed!
Politicians who think up ways to tax us are creative people sometimes. The tax that the men in power came up with on this occasion was the ‘burial in wool tax'.
Between 1677 and 1814, everyone who died had to be buried in wool. The only exception was if someone died of the plague. The woollen garment covering the body could be in the form of a shirt, shift, shroud or a simple sheet covering - anything really so long as it was made of wool.
To prove that the terms of the act had been followed, an affidavit had to be made by those organising the burial and then the clergyman conducting the burial had to record this in the registers. What a complicated procedure - and all to protect the interests of the wool trade.
So, for example, in Bowes register these affidavits are noted.
Here is one for 1683: "Affidavits were made that all the said persons were buryed according to the directions of the said act and account was given this 4th of May 1683".
In Rokeby parish register, the entries say variously: "18 July Ann Marriner, buried in woollen onely; 17 Feb. Anna Neesham. Wooll; 4 Apr. Anna Holme spinster. W." After six years wool wasn't mentioned again. Some registers ignore the ruling altogether. I suspect that clergymen objected to acting as the government's inspectors.
The act was repealed in 1814, but by that time it hadn't been obeyed for many years. The sheep survived anyway without the help of the government.
By the beginning of the 18th century a revolution in agriculture was gathering pace.
Farmers were learning how to improve their crops and stock by selective breeding. The open fields were gradually being divided up and enclosed, so allowing groups of animals to be kept apart from other groups.
Breeds of cattle and sheep began to be developed.
At first, the moorlands weren't enclosed so the first breeds of sheep to be recognised and registered were lowland sheep.
One of the new breeds was one that had specially long and fine wool.
The breed was called Teeswater. There are still a few Teeswater sheep around today but nowadays, like our shorthorn cows, they are somewhat at risk.
Teeswater sheep are now a rare breed, but 200 years ago they were an entirely new type of sheep - more than double the size of the rough hill sheep.
It took longer to make changes in the hill sheep.
It was much more difficult to practice selective breeding on open moorland where several different flocks all mixed together.
Gradually though, the sheep on the uplands became much larger.
Eventually, in the later 19th century, a distinctive breed was recognisable. However, it wasn't until after the First World War that a group of farmers met at Tan Hill and decided to form an association to register and protect their local sheep.
They called the breed ‘Swaledale'. The tups had curly horns and the sheep had black faces.
They were different from the neighbouring Herdwick and Scottish Blackface sheep.
The small and sturdy sheep that had inhabited our moors for hundreds of years died out in favour of the new Swaledales.
Today, I don't think there are any of the old stock left anywhere. They are regrettably extinct.
On the other hand, there are more than two million Swaledales munching their way across Northern England.
Let's hope that sheep, whatever their breed, will continue to roam our hills for many years to come.
First published in the Mercury November 28, 2007