Wool is the whole wealth of my people!

by Octavia Randolph

Milking an ewe. Sheep's milk and cheese was a
valued commodity for hundreds of years.

LIFE without sheep was unthinkable. For the average Anglo-Saxon, sheep meant sustaining meat, milk, and cheese, healing wool-wax, valuable parchment, and most vitally, fleece. Fleece to be shorn or pulled, and spun and woven into cloth. Recall that there were then only two types of fabrics: woollen ones, and linen. (Only the very rich, on rare, ceremonial occasions, clothed themselves in imported silks.)

It is not for nothing that the seat of the Lord High Chancellor in the House of Lords has been a woolsack.

The woolsack is the low cushion (with protruding
backrest in middle) facing the throne in this
photograph of Westminster, c 1880.
Wikimedia Commons

It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of sheep on the early economy:

The history of the change from mediaeval to modern England might well be written in the form of a social history of the English cloth trade. -G.M. Trevelyan, O.M., Illustrated History of England

Sheep can thrive in harsh and stony environments where crop farming is difficult, and if protected from natural predators small flocks can rapidly grow large due to many ewes’ propensity to twinned lambs. Raw wool was exported from England to the Continent at least by the 8th century, and greatly expanded under Norman rule. British wool found eager buyers abroad, especially for the productive looms of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres – creation site of so many magnificent medieval tapestries. The vast majority of exported wool went into durable cloth for clothing and drapery use – cloth sent back to the British Isles in its finished state.

It was Edward III who, by inviting skilled Flemish weavers to settle in England in 1331, began to reverse this wool-out/cloth-back trade. Many of the Flemings were in fact English allies and refugees from the Hundred Years War. Although subject to discrimination, suspicion, and even outright massacre in the London uprising against them in 1381, these weavers became entrenched in English society, their skill elevating the woollens trade to an exalted economic status.

Buying and selling sheep. Having reached
an agreement, two men shake hands.

Of the sixty-five distinct sheep breeds in Britain today, the oldest is the diminutive Soay, a descendent of the animals brought by the earliest Neolithic immigrants. A remnant population still lives on the St Kilda islands off the Outer Hebrides. They are typically brown, black, or dark cream-coloured, often with nearly white bellies. Most rams have downward curving horns, and a good percentage of the ewes as well. Soays are indeed tiny, only a third of the size of a modern sheep. Their wool is fine and short (2").

Soay ewe with twins. Photo from the St Kilda Soay Sheep Project,
which monitors and studies the wild population on the island.

Soay horned ewe with her lamb. Soay Sheep Breeders Cooperative

The tan-faced mountain breeds, still surviving in many variations, descend from medieval stock of marsh and hill sheep. Intelligent and very hardy, the ewes have a keen sense of direction and remember migratory trails from season to season. The mountain breeds generally have a coarse, hairy outer-coat over a fine woolly under-coat. The wool is loosely packed, even stringy in appearance, allowing the sheep to dry out quickly after a sudden downpour or washing.

Dalesbred, a mountain breed, showing the luxuriously
long and dense coat. www.nationalsheep.org.uk

Dalesbred ram, with splendid horns.
Dalesbred Sheep Breeders Association

Speaking of washing...

A clean sheep will produce a clean fleece, with less waste and a higher yield. Long before sheep were "dipped" in ghastly pesticides, they were, when it was warranted, washed. Small streams were ideal for this, for they could be temporarily dammed, and a pool formed. If the stream had a gravel bed, so much the better, as little muck would be churned up by the actions of the washers. Sheep, fouled with mud and matted droppings, were driven into the pool. Not surprisingly when one considers the amount of air trapped in the fleece, sheep float - and are also strong swimmers. Sometimes a good, wet, rubdown would be all that was needed; if required, a dilute solution of washing lye (made from wood ash) was scrubbed over the beast. Once released the sheep swam for the nearest bank to dry in the sun.

Wool-fat, Wool-oil, Wool-wax...

Are earlier names for lanolin. Lanolin was extracted from sheep's wool by boiling washed wool in water. When the pan was left to cool, a milky white grease would be floating on top - the sheep's waterproofing. The globules could be picked out, and further refined by squeezing them through linen cloths. Lanolin was invaluable as a simple remedy for chapped and roughened skin. Blended with powdered or crushed herbs, it served as a medicinal salve.

The Danes brought over native multi-horned sheep during the Viking invasion, some with as many as six horns. There may have been some breeds native to the British Isles which also sported horns in multiples, as noted by Robert Trow-Smith in A History of British Livestock Husbandry, 1700-1900:

…four or six-horned sheep is also to be found in the Isle of Man under the name ‘loaghton’. It, and indeed all the other native Scottish sheep types, is commonly given a Scandinavian origin and said to have been brought in by the Vikings. That may be so; but it should be noted that sculls and horn-cores of four-horned sheep have been found in undated deposits at Jarlshof (an ancient site in Shetland, Scotland), where the long succession of sites ranges from Bronze Age to late mediaeval dates, and the arrival of this sheep could have equally well have occurred earlier – or later – than the Viking settlement.

Their descendants are still bred for fleece and flesh in Britain. They found their way into ornamental sheep parks for the gentry in the seventeenth century.

A Manx Loaghton sheep, with characteristic four horns.
Manx Loaghton Sheep Breeders Group

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“Wool is the whole wealth of my people” exclaims Ælfwyn, one of the major characters in The Circle of Ceridwen, to a group of doubting Danes. She believed in her sheep! The Circle of Ceridwen Saga, 16 weeks on Amazon's Top Twenty Best Selling List in Women's Adventure. Now in paperback!

The Animals of Cottage and Castle: Sheep

by Katherine Ashe

William Holman Hunt's "Stray Sheep" painted in 1852

Like all of the domestic animals we’ve considered, the sheep has been mankind’s partner in survival since ancient times. In fact the sheep is among the oldest, being with us since about 13,000 BC. “With us” may be stretching a point. Sheep have never been quite so cozy in our homes as cats, dogs and chickens. But people have followed them, herded them, plucked, sheared, milked and slaughtered them for meat from a time that was past memory even when Abraham was master of flocks in Judea.

An illuminated manuscript
pic of a shepherd

The shepherd, lowly in social rank in any culture from antiquity to the present, still enjoys a special attraction for the imagination – the allure of freedom outside the restrictions of village and town life. And it’s a stunning political statement in the New Testament that angels announced the birth of Christ to shepherds rather than to priests or kings – a declaration of a new religion specifically inclusive of, and even favoring, the most poor and humble.

For the ancient Greeks and grecophiles of 16th through 18th century Europe, the shepherd and shepherdess at home in the wilderness took on a romantic aura with more than a hint of promiscuity. But for those who labored at the work of crafts or farming, the shepherd seemed a lazy lout who did nothing but sit and daydream while his dogs guarded the sheep and gave warning at the approach of danger. Danger usually took the form of thieves, wolves or lions (yes, there once were cougar-ish lions even in Europe.)

A Suffolk ram

Idle for much of the time – yes, although the shepherd had a number of specialized skills. He possessed incomparable knowledge of his country’s terrain, guiding his sheep from sheltered winter grounds to mountainous summer pastures. He acted as midwife at lambing time and as nurse to motherless or rejected lambs (called cossets – hence “cossetting”). In far ancient times he gathered the wool that was shed. As selective breeding developed (another of his accomplishments), he knew how to shear the wool from the skin with as little injury to his dismayed sheep as possible. The good shepherd knew his hundreds of sheep as individuals and who rightly owned them.

A Romney ram

Unlike the flocks of Abraham, the sheep in Europe and Eurasia’s huge flocks often were the property of many owners. In ancient Rome, in medieval London, in modern-day Azerbaijan, it has been customary for the moderately rich, or even the poor with a little set by to invest, to put that excess wealth into the ownership of sheep. The immense flocks of the Pyrenees, the Cotswold hills or the Eurasian steppe comprised a sort of savings bank in which the city dweller might have his share: his “interest” paid from sale of wool and of young male lambs for meat, while the female lambs constituted the capital gain of his investment. Most ewes bear one to two lambs per year and every sheep, including year-old lambs, produces a salable fleece each year. Barring the hazards of disease, this investment can compare very favorably with the present-day bank savings account or the gyrations of the stock market.

A Border Leicester lamb

From Roman times to the Industrial Revolution the raising of sheep in England was the principal basis of the country’s export trade. Annually, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the accumulated shearing was sent to Bruges where a banking consortium made cash purchase of the year’s shearing in its entirety. It was a national fiscal disaster when, in 1263, to finance the Crown’s attempt to regain sovereignty from the Parliamentary party of Simon de Montfort, Prince Edward (later Edward I) broke into the vaults of the Knights Templar in London, slaughtered the guards and stole the Wool Guild’s newly arrived annual shipment of gold from Belgium.

But what of the sheep? There are hundreds of breeds, originating in every part of the world. They are bred for meat, for their staple -- their wool that can be long or relatively short, fine or rough -- and in some places they are bred for milk from which cheese is made. Most sheep, including wild varieties from which domestic sheep first were bred, are white. This is very convenient for dyeing. Sheep fiber has a kink so that, when twisted together, the fibers stay twisted instead of sliding apart as will most hair and fur.

Shearing: This usually is done at the beginning of warm weather. By this time the sheep has been wearing her wool for a year and it’s gray, filthy and billowing around her so thickly that if she’s toppled over she can’t get up. If she won’t just lie there submissively, you sit on the ground with the poor animal upside down between your knees so she’s propped against your chest with her head on the far side of your shoulder (do watch out for those horns.) Pulling the wool to one side along the middle of her tummy, insert the point of your shears where the hair comes straight out from the skin; slip the blade between the hair and skin, and cut. Move the shears along, pushing off to each side what you’ve sheared. Roll the sheep between your knees to shear along her neck, shoulders, flanks and hips. Eventually you’ll have a near-naked sheep in your lap with only a strip down her back not yet sheared. Turn your sheep right side up -- while hanging on firmly -- and shear the last strip. The fleece will fall away and you can let your sheep bolt off to her stripped and embarrassed-looking herd mates. If you have several hundred sheep, you and your fellow shepherds can expect to spend a few days at this exercise. It may be done quickly, but there are points off for drawing blood.

Sorting: Each fleece is divided up, the best parts (back and sides) sorted from the worst (the breech), then the fleece is washed. In this process the sheep’s sweaty oil, lanolin, may be skimmed off. Yes, this is that hand lotion ingredient and perhaps it accounts for the attractiveness of shepherdesses.

Carding: Anciently this was done with thistles set in a board, then a pair of boards set with wooden or iron spikes (wire dog brushes are a small modern version of wool “carding combs.”) By the late Middle Ages manual carding had been replaced by a spiked drum through which the wool was fed. Whether by hand combing or machine, the object is to pass a matted wad of fibers through the comb’s teeth as many times as it takes to loosen the mat and set each fiber side by side in the same direction. The result is a pad, a rolag of aligned fibers that is then loosely rolled into the shape of a sausage.

Spinning: The rolag’s fibers are aligned in horizontal circles ready to be drawn out from the tip of the sausage-shape then twisted together by using a drop spindle (a smooth stick with a circular disk near one end) or that icon of feminine industry, the spinning wheel. Symbolic of virtue and economy (though also of witches), a spinning wheel was often a husband’s gift to his bride.

The sheep at Highclere, in a Paradise
Landscape typical of the 18th century

On England’s great estates small flocks of sheep were kept for their contribution to the landscape, their nibbling and evacuating producing magnificent lawns. For that sweep of classical, Arcadian and fenceless perfection, the ha-ha was used by designers William Kent and Capability Brown. It’s a deep ditch with a vertical wall on the outer side and a gradual slope on the inner. A sheep wandering down the embankment is confronted with a high wall of stone-reinforced earth that is invisible to the viewer from the far side. Out for a stroll and enjoying the view, one can easily step off the brink – amid gales of gleeful “ha has” from one’s companions.

A Cheviot ewe with her lamb

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Katherine Ashe is the author of Montfort, the four volume historical novel on the life of the founder of Parliament.