Book looks at how sheep shaped our world

SHEEP – we all know about sheep, don’t we? They are those anonymous white blobs on the hillside that produce enchanting little lambs to delight us in the spring. We enjoy them again a bit later in the year with minted new potatoes, broad beans and onion sauce.

And that’s about it, isn’t it? Well, of course it’s not.

As Philip Walling says at the start of his book, Counting Sheep: “There is a parallel world at work in Britain which most people, even those who live close to it, hardly ever notice and, even when they do, know little or nothing about. It’s a world that has existed time out of mind and was once the foundation of all the wealth of England.”

It’s the world of sheep husbandry.

Philip’s ancestral roots run deep into the hills and valleys of the Lake District. He took over his first farm as a young man, paying a very low rent because the owners, the Sales, were so grateful that – 35 years earlier – his grandfather had helped to save a soldier, who was a member of their family, from a Cumbrian blizzard during the winter of 1940-41.

Eventually, he was able to buy the farm at a substantial discount as a sitting tenant. When he later left farming and became a barrister, he sold it, feeling terribly guilty that he appeared to have “thrown the Sales’ kindness back in their faces”.

Philip adds that he hopes that his book “will be accepted as a slight recompense, inadequate as it is”.

The book is a celebration of sheep and their effect on our landscape, economy, language and culture; for more than anywhere else in the world, Britain is sheep country. From the mountains of Scotland to the Yorkshire Dales and the marshes of Kent, breeds have been developed that are perfectly adapted to their local environments.

Philip looks at the breeds that are kept today and the ancient varieties our ancestors raised. One of the most remarkable is a type of Viking sheep that still survives on North Ronaldsay, in the Orkney Islands, existing mainly on seaweed and the feet and legs of dead seabirds.

He describes the extraordinary importance of wool to the national economy after the Norman Conquest and into the Middle Ages, an era when sheep were not kept for meat, with only old ewes at the end of their useful lives ending up on the dinner table. They must have taken some chewing.

For back then, wool was the backbone of the country’s economy, with one merchant engraving into the windows of his house: “I praise God and ever shall – it is the sheep hath paid for all.”

But in the 17th and 18th centuries, with a growing urban population to feed, things began to change, and the priority became meat.

Today, Philip says, the demand is for younger, leaner lamb carcases and, as tastes alter, the breeders respond. The result is the Texel and the Beltex – “square barrels of meat with a leg at each corner”.

But there is still a vital role for the hardy hill breeds, such as the Swaledale, at the top of the “sheep pyramid”, a system of cross-breeding that ends with lambs for the table.

I met Philip after he had given one of the Tuesday Talks at The Station, in Richmond. He described his passion for the subject, his love for Britain’s “sheep country” and his fears for the future of farming in the hills of England, condemning environmentalists and “re-wilding” projects for removing sheep and people from the landscape.

In his book, he jokes that extreme re-wilders will not rest until the European straight-tusked elephant, which roamed Western Europe 115,000 years ago, is once again grazing the hills of Cumbria, adding: “I can see that going down well in Keswick.”

Lowland sheep-keeping is also threatened, says Philip.

"There is little profit in sheep, employing a shepherd is beyond all but the richest farmers, and fencing has become too expensive. Also, the EU pays farmers who might be tempted to keep a flock not to do so, often with the excuse of environmental benefits from creating wildlife reserves on pieces of land that would at one time have grazed a flock."

Environmental payments, he says, have turned many farmers into little more than welfare claimants.

Philip told me: “A false dichotomy has been set up by the environmental lobby – the Green blob – that you either have farmers and sheep or you have a healthy biodiversity. I don’t think that’s true

“It’s based on an urban fantasy that the land is better kept wild, that the proper state for the land to be is in a state of nature and that people are somehow illegitimate interlopers. Sheep and mankind have gone together for thousands of years. Get rid of the sheep and you get rid of the people.

“I love the countryside but I don’t love environmentalists. I’m not an environmentalist. I see the countryside for what it really is, which is a place where we can live and produce food and we can develop enduring communities.”

Philip now lives in the countryside of Northumberland where he is working on a book about the rivers and streams of England. He no longer farms sheep, but he still has a sheepdog – Tess, a cross between a Border Collie and a Bearded Collie – perhaps, in part, to remind him of his earlier life helping to keep Britain’s ancient sheep-keeping tradition alive.

Counting Sheep, A Celebration of the Pastoral Heritage of Britain, by Philip Walling, is published by Profile Books at £14.99.

For details of the Tuesday Talks and other events at The Station, Richmond, call 01748-850123, or go to www.thestation.co.uk.