I’ve long been a fan of Wensleydale Longwool sheep. If you are too the current exhibition featuring the breed at Tennants in Leyburn is a must.
Wensleydales first caught my eye many years ago at the Great Yorkshire Show with their large size and distinctive fleeces.
The fleeces are arguably the very finest and the wool highly prized for its quality. That quality is showcased in Wensleydale Sheep: A Handcrafted History at Tennants Auction Rooms.
Organised by a small group of passionate individuals within the Wensleydale Longwool Sheep Breeders’ Association, the exhibition brings together the work of 40 textile artists, from across the UK with every piece crafted using native, rare-breed Wensleydale sheep wool.
Each exhibit is unique and almost every one was created especially for the exhibition, which is set to travel for two years, concluding at the end of 2026.
It was great to meet some of the exhibitors and to talk to them about how they created their works; I particularly loved the armchair and stool upholstered with long strands of curly Wensleydale wool.
While there I bumped into one of the Wensleydale Longwool breed’s greatest champions, renowned breeder Ernie Sherwin.
Ernie’s won many prizes for his Wensleydales, at the Great Yorkshire and elsewhere. I’ve had the privilege to see his flock on the farm at Nosterfield, near Bedale, which helped me understand how special this breed is.
Ernie told me how Wensleydales can be traced back to a single ram by the name of Bluecap, born in East Appleton, near Catterick, in 1839.
A sheep of immense strength and character, Bluecap had a very dark head and skin but his fleece was white, with long lustrous curls, and the amazing Wensleydale was born.
Over the decades that followed, the descendants of Bluecap developed into a breed in their own right, being formally named and recognised as "Wensleydale" sheep in 1876 when they were given their own class at the Great Yorkshire Show.
The primary purpose of the breed was originally to improve wool quality and also to add size to crossbred offspring, producing a larger, leaner carcase to cater for an ever-growing population 19th century.
Despite the quality of its fleece, the modern-day popularity of quicker-fattening Continental sheep breeds did see a decline in the number of Wensleydales and it is now registered as a rare breed.
That’s a shame but numbers have recovered from the nadir of 1977 when there were estimated to be only 25 flocks left. Thanks to the work of the Wensleydale Longwool Sheepbreeders’ Association, its new secretary Jodie Shadforth and passionate breed advocates like Ernie, its future is much brighter.
The exhibition, which opened in London last year, is a tremendous celebration of our local agricultural heritage. You can catch it at Tennants until Sunday and then later in the year at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes.
