Grazing sheep are a familar sight on the Dales. Dr Bill Mitchell considers the lowly beast, and, in particular, two classic breeds for the area – Swaledale and Dalesbred

I have just written for a friend the text of a book about Herdwick sheep, which inhabit the craggy heartland of the Lake District. When I glance out of a window at my home in North Ribblesdale I see limestone country on a grand scale.

Here are grey crags, grey walls – and sheep. Grey sheep, nibbling grass and giving the hillside a tidy appearance. Two species of sheep – Swaledale (known locally as Swardle) and Dalesbred – are closely associated with the Yorkshire Dales.

Anyone wishing to see a Swaledale sheep a century ago would have had to travel to the fells in the vicinity of Tan Hill, on the Yorkshire-Westmorland border. Shrewd farmers spent generations breeding sheep of a type to suit the immediate environment.

Swaledale, in their pure forms, were found mainly on the high altitudes of the Pennines and moorland grazings in the north.

Then there’s the Dalesbred breed, slightly larger than the Swaledale. It has what a farmer friend called “a squary carcass, a good outlook (sharp eyes), distinctive colour – clean black and white on both legs and face – with some good hard hair on the face.” It has been a fell-country sheep, producing crops of hardy lambs for re-stocking the fells.

Sixty years ago, chatting with Frank Campbell, a farmer at Horton-in-Ribblesdale, I was told that the breed was not new. What became known as the Dalesbred had not been regarded as a separate and distinctive breed.

Then one or two interested farmers met in Buckden to fix the type. The inaugurator was Mr O Robinson, a Bradford wool merchant who also farmed extensively in Upper Wharfedale.

The aforementioned Frank Campbell, one of the founders of the Dalesbred Sheepbreeders’ Association, had – at the time I chatted with him – become the association’s chairman. Two other original members were Jim Verity, of Kirkby Malham, and Joe Close, of Starbotton. Frank believed the association came into being to find a sheep-type more suited to the fells than the Scottish sheep of the time; which had short legs and long wool.

If the dale-country became snow-covered, sheep with clotted wool seem to find it hard to walk. In summer they tended to rigg [turn upside down]. A sheep breed that was longish in the leg was better at withstanding a Dales winter. Frank had a flock of about 200 Dalesbred sheep that roamed across 350 acres of rough grazing on both Moughton and Penyghent, land on each side of North Ribblesdale.

I gathered from Frank that the Dalesbred had a good squary carcass, sharp eyes and a lively disposition. Good hard hair lined the face and the fleece had a good bind with some pearl on top of the staple.

The Dalesbred was to be found on some of the highest hills in Yorkshire.

Where did this sheep breed originate?

In the book I have just written about the Herdwick sheep, they were said to have had a Norse ancestry. (A lot of the information came from Herdwick Billy, the nickname of a farmer living at the head of one of the Lakeland dales).

Frank Campbell, of North Ribblesdale, mentioned that a century before we chatted the Dales area would be populated by “crag sheep”. They suited virtually any kind of land – limestone, moss, white ground or heather and did not seem to lose weight when changing from one kind of ground to another.

When Frank and I discussed wool, a major item on a sheep farm, he told me that an average Dalesbred ewe (or, in local vernacular, yow) yielded between four-and-a-half and four-and-three-quarter pounds of wool. He paused, smiled, then recalled that a tup he handled clipped ten and a half pounds as a shearing and, at two-shear, gave him a fleece weighing eleven pounds. So many people wanted to see that fleece he kept it in his house for a while.

Sheep have been the only domestic animals that suit life on the high fells, which are windswept, with only a thin covering of soil and coarse vegetation. The sheep yielded a vast amount of wool. After a useful life on the fells, hill sheep of the North were driven to lowland areas for crossing with the mutton-producing strains.

Pennine sheep terms have interested me. At times I have found them amusing. Pronunciation varied from dale to dale. When I visited Arkengarthdale I found that a male sheep was no longer a tup. It was a tweearp!