Peak Experience

Young lambs in the Hope Valley  Curious sheep of Cressbrook Dale  Sheep and lambs near Monyash

 

Lamb is a traditional local speciality.  You will see sheep almost anywhere you go in the Peak District. Spring is a delight, with newborn lambs bouncing and grazing in the fields of the Dark Peak valleys and on the White Peak.

 

Click on the Accommodation link to your right for farm guest houses where you can see sheep and lambs.  Beechenhill and Wolfscote Grange offer special farm trails for guests to explore life on a farm.

 

To buy locally produced lamb click on the Shopping link.

 

Sheep have grazed the Peak District for over 6,000 years, and they’re everywhere!  Britain has probably the largest range of native sheep breeds in the world.  Increasing numbers of farmers are choosing to keep some of these special ancient breeds.

 

Archaeologists believe Neolithic farmers first introduced sheep into the Peak District some time before 3,000 BC.  They often find sheep bones and teeth when they excavate the 2,000-year-old Romano-British farms and villages.

 

Sheep farming increased in the 1300s AD, when widespread cattle disease coupled with a colder, wetter climate made it more difficult to grow crops and rear cattle.  Some medieval villages were deserted as large landowners  with tenant villages decided to evict the villagers and raise sheep instead.

 

These days farmers mostly rear sheep for meat because wool prices are very low.

 

Traditional breeds you will see today include black-faced Derbyshire Gritstones, Whitefaced Woodlands, Swaledales and Mules.  There are some rare white and brown Jacobs too.

Gritstone sheep are big and strong with fine fleeces and clearly marked black and white faces.  They are mostly found on the Dark Peak moorlands and in neighbouring valleys.  Whitefaced Woodlands have a broad white face with a pink nose and produce very fine wool.  Males have large spiralling horns.  Swaledales have black faces with white or grey marks around their nose and mouth.

 

The Hope Show on August Bank Holiday Monday is the official show of the Derbyshire Gritstone Breeders Society and a great place to see local sheep breeds.

 

Click here to discover a year in the life of a sheep.

 

Two High Peak Whitefaced Woodland rams were sold to a Kentish farmer in the 1800s.  They escaped and walked over 200 miles home!

 

Read the landscape for sheep-farming history.  Low gaps in walls are sheep creeps to let sheep move between fields.  Moorland sheepfolds are circular or square walled enclosures for sorting sheep gathered from the moors.  You might see them beside streams. Farmers washed their sheep in the rivers before chemical sheep dips came in during the 1800s.  Ashford-in-the-Water’s Sheep Wash Bridge gets its name from this practice.