Where there’s wool ...

Finds one of the earliest guides to selective sheep breeding hidden in a Bible story.

Victoria Finlay

along their noses and neat pinkish teddybear ears that stuck out sideways.

It had started to rain, and with the book half covered by my coat I couldn’t immediately work out what they were.

It wasn’t lambing season but they did in fact look like giant lambs: They had a kind of comic alertness to them, an endearing quality which made me stay there, stubborn to learn what they were.

Then I found the page. More than 800 years ago, sheep like these had been bred by the monks at Leominster, near Hereford, when they were called Lemster Ore (meaning Leominster Gold) because of the wealth they once brought.

Today they’re called ryelands and they – or rather their ancestors, because as we’ll see, sheep don’t stay the same through the generations – were once the very finest breed of wool sheep in England.

These ones – as I learned later from their owner, who just keeps a few of them in his fields – had been introduced because they’re more docile than suffolks. And the ryeland ewe lambs raise more money than other British wool breeds, even now.

Three kinds of invasion, three kinds of sheep

Sheep were first brought to the British Isles about 6000 years ago. The original animals were small and long-legged and probably looked like today’s soay breed on St Kilda in the Hebrides – skittish, goat-like, with horns like crescent moons.

The Neolithic sheep didn’t need shearing, which was useful because people didn’t have shears. Often their winter coats would just drop off in springtime and could be picked up from the ground. If not, the fleeces would be loose enough by June or July to be peeled, or ‘‘roo’’-ed, directly from the animals’ backs.*

When the Romans occupied Britain, they brought their own sheep. These ones had white faces and fine wool, and they were bred with the native breeds to make a new kind of sheep that came to be seen as special.

Cloth made from the wool was said to be ‘‘spun so fine that it’s like a spider’s web’’, and in the 3rd century most went straight to Rome.

In the 9th century, the Vikings invaded. Their sheep had black faces and horns: You see their descendants in the blackface and swaledale breeds, which even now are still found mostly in the north wherever the Vikings settled.

Neolithic primitives, Roman luxuries, Scandinavian hardies. From these three very different sheep evolved all the breeds and cross-breeds that have made British wool unique, and at times important.

* The English word ‘‘roo’’ shares an origin with the Old Icelandic r´yia, to pull wool from a sheep, and with the Old Russian r’’vati, to tear, tug and pluck.

Extracted from Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World by Victoria Finlay. Published by Profile Books. Out this month, RRP $55.