IN a normal year, more than 15 million people visit the Lake District to enjoy its captivating fusion of jagged mountains, crystalline waters and rolling green pasture. It’s a glorious landscape, but, as is the case with any other, it didn’t evolve alone. At its heart is the indigenous population of Herdwick sheep—the name derives from herdwyck, an ancient word for pasture—and the families who have farmed it for centuries. For these people, this place is more than a crucial tourist attraction, it’s a workplace and a home and, at present, they feel increasingly vulnerable.
Some 95% of the national Herdwick flock lives in commercial flocks in the central and western dales of the Lake District. The breed probably arrived in Viking times, developing its singular traits, such as the lavishly layered grey fleece (thought to dry out faster than the white fleeces of its cousins) with a hairy outer that doesn’t part in vicious winds. The sheep may look endearing with their white, teddy-bear faces, but, among native hill flocks—Britain’s hardiest breeds —Herdwicks are the toughest of all, grazing at heights of up to 3,000ft and tolerating Britain’s highest rainfall counts.
As well as their refined physical attributes, Herdwicks possess a strong ‘hefting’ instinct, which means that, on a vast, unfenced fell, a flock will not stray beyond the area where it was reared. In turn, those sheep rear their young on that same portion of the fell and so on through the generations, enabling two or more separate farmers to graze the same fell without trespassing on each other’s ground.
Denne historien er fra April 08, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra April 08, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
