Rough Fell Sheep

The Rough Fell sheep is part of the Blackfaced Mountain family and is one of the largest of the mountain sheep and was bred in the middle ages from a Blackfaced sheep and other local breeds which are now extinct.  It was first mentioned in 1848.

Top: Rough Fell Ram with impressive horns
Bottom: Rough Fell Ewes also have horns but smaller

The Rough Fell sheep, as the name implies, lives on the Fells, which are uncultivated high grounds traditionally used for common grazing by multiple famers.  The majority of the breed are to be found within a 7-10 mile radius of the Fells in Cumbria and Cumbria is the northwestern most county in England with Scotland on its north edge and the Irish Sea on the western edge. 

Being confined to such a small geographical area causes concern for the future of the breed as during the UK's 2001 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak 35% of the Rough Fell sheep were culled in a bid to contain the spread of the disease.  There were only 18,000 breeding ewes at the start of the outbreak so to lose 35% of them was devastating to the breed and numbers have not recovered much, even after 20 years.  At the time of writing, the Rough Fell are in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust category 6: "Other UK Native Breeds" which means that there are more than 3000 registered breeding ewes.

The area in which they live has a very harsh climate and is very wet, receiving 60 to 100 inches of rain per year and during winter it is blanketed by heavy snowfalls and the Rough Fell sheep has developed  an exceptionally strong and heavy fleece to cope with the conditions.  The breed is primarily raised for meat and the fibre is the coarsest of the Blackface Mountain family and is often used to stuff mattresses as the outercoat resembles horsehair.

The Rough Fell is a large build sheep with a blackface that has large white markings on the faces, dominating the snout to make them look like they are wearing a black mask.  The legs are white with black markings and both sexes have horns, although the ewes are much smaller than the impressive curly horns of the ram.  

They produce a good size fleece of 2-3.5kg in weight with staples that are 6-12 inches long (15-30cm) that contains hair and kemp that protects them against wet weather, along with finer wool to keep them warm. This is a breed that produces wool that is definitely not for worn next to skin wear.  The fleece is white and the tips are likely to be darker the the main part of the fleece.  

This fleece is double-coated and so however you prepare it it is likely to separate the coats and the easiest way to do that is to just hold the base of the lock and pull on the hairy tips and you will get a lot more hair than you will get wool.  You can spin the hair to make a rope type yarn to make household textiles or you could use it as garden twine.  The wool is likely to have kemp in it, which wont take up any dye and if you dye both the wool and the hair they will most likely look different shades.  You can spin straight from the lock

Yarns spun from Rough Fell fleece are definitely suited to household items, rugs and upholstery and not for any kind of clothing.  

I have bought this breed in as 100g of washed fleece and it is really hairy and you can see some kemp in it too.

As you can see from the photos, it is not the nicest stuff to play with.

I only got 33g of combed top from the 100g of fleece as I tried my best to remove as much of the coarsest hair to leave as much wool as I could.

My finished yarn is of fairly rough quality to the touch of the hand and you can feel the prickly hair and kemp but because I removed a lot of the hair it's not as nasty as it might otherwise have been.  I got 31g/74m of sport weight yarn.  My knitted piece for the project took 20g/48m so I have a small amount left to do whatever with.