Beulah Speckled Face Sheep

The Beulah Speckled Face sheep is also known as the Eppynt Hill and Beulah Speckled Face sheep and is named after the hilly area in south-central Wales where these sheep originate and are still kept today.  They are fairly common in Wales but not very well known outside of Wales.  The actual origins of the breed are a mystery.  It might be a true native breed as there is no mention of cross breeding in any literature.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 20th century.

There are not many decent detailed photos of these sheep available on the Internet without having to pay extortionate amounts of money for them, but that is not an argument I want to get into here.

The Beulah Speckled Face sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "Other UK Native Breeds" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there are over 3000 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society.

The Beulah Speckled Face is bigger than a true mountain sheep.  It has long head, speckled face and legs, which are free from wool. Ewes and most rams don't have horns.  The ewes are good mothers and produce good milk and are often crossed with downland rams to produce early prime lambs.

They produce a medium size fleece of 1.5 to 2.5 kg that can vary greatly from fine to coarse.  Finer fleece are great for knitwear and coarse fleece are best left for carpets and household textiles that need to withstand a lot of wear.  The larger, heavier fleece tend to the be at the coarse end of the range.  The staple length is generally 3-5 inches (7.5-12.5cm).  The fleece is white and shouldn't have any dark fibres. 

This fleece can be carded and spun woollen style or combed and spun worsted style.  It is generally quite a white wool, certainly brighter and less creamy than others that I have tried so far.  I've not dyed any myself but information available tells me that you get clean colours when you dye it.  

Yarns spun from fine fleece are perfect for everyday items and if you are spinning a coarse fleece then those yarns are best for household textiles.  

I bought this breed in as 530g of pre-washed fleece, which was the only option available to me at the time.  When it arrived I could see it was full of dark coloured kemp and fine dark hairs, non of which should be there, but seeing as I would be combing it I hoped that the majority would be removed during the preparation process.

After I had combed it I was left with 339g of hand combed top, most of the dark kemp and very short hairs had been removed but there was still a fair amount of long dark hairs that were ruining it so armed with a pair of tweezers and good light I sat and picked out as many as I could and this left with me 318g of top to spin.  There are still some hairs in there and some dirt and grease too, it's not been washed to my standard.

My finished yarn is quite soft to the touch of the hand and a nice clean white.  I lost a number of grams of weight during the washing process when the rest of the dirt and grease came out.  I have a total of 299g/795m.  My knitted piece for the project took 33g/94m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Llanwenog Sheep

The next breed of sheep is the Llanwenog, a welsh breed of sheep belonging to the Welsh Hill and Mountain family.  Developed in the late 1800's from the now-extinct Llanllwni (the local black-faced sheep of the western coastal counties of Wales and named for the mountain they lived on), Shropshires, Welsh Mountain and Clun Forest breeds.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 19th century.

The Llanwenog sheep, at the time of writing, is in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust Category 5: Minority (1500-3000) registered breeding ewes. They are a prolific breed raised primarily for meat and are usually found in mid-west Wales but there are specialist flocks around the UK and the breed association was formed in 1957. 

The Llanwenog is a medium build sheep with a blackface and black legs and a distinctive tuft of wool on its forehead between its short thin ears.  Neither sexes have horns

They produce a medium size white fleece of around 2 - 2.5kg and the staple length is 2 to 4.5 inches (5 to 11.5cm).  The shorter fibres in the fleece can be carded but this is a fleece that is best combed and spun worsted to show off its lustre, shine and sleek qualities.  It can be spun from opened locks.  This fleece takes dye well.

Yarns spun from Llanwenog fleece are quite soft with good stitch definition and can be used for whatever you want to make.  

I bought this breed in as a full fleece back in July 2018 from a farmer in Wales, long before I decided to create a British Breeds Project or write about every British Breed.  At the time, I washed the fleece and split it into four, dyeing three parts different colours and, luckily for me, I left one part white and this is what I will use for my Breed Project. My skirted fleece arrived weighing 1.7kg and after I had removed any other undesirable bits and second cuts, washed and dried it, it weighed 1.33kg

I had 262g of washed white fleece which, once combed, became 150g of hand combed top

I lost 10g somewhere because my skeins total 140g/418m of double knit weight yarn

My finished yarn is fairly soft to the touch of the hand is a nice warm white.  My knitted piece for the project only took 16g/48m so I have plenty left to do whatever with.

The "w" in the middle looks a bit weird but it is there and is perfectly formed

Lonk Sheep

The origin of the sheep's name is a bit of a mystery.  Some believe it derives from the words long or lanky, the sheep are quite tall, whilst others believe it derives from the word Lancashire, the county from which this breed hails.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 12th century.

The Lonk sheep, at the time of writing, is in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust Category 5: Minority (1500-3000) breeding ewes and it has a minus sign next to it which means it has seen more than a 5% decrease in numbers since the previous report. 

Lonk are concentrated to the Pennines in Lancashire with one flock being able to be traced by to 1740, but there are some flocks of these sheep now in Yorkshire and Derbyshire.  They are one of the largest native British Hill breeds and can survive on poor grazing and in bleak conditions so are usually found on the moors and uplands of the Pennines.  

Similar in looks to the Derbyshire Gritstone but Lonks are larger and both sexes have horns whereas the Derbyshire Gritstones have no horns. Their faces and legs are black and white and free of wool, which is white.

They produce a good sized fleece of 2-3kg with blocky staples with well developed but disorganised crimp. There may be some black hairs in the fleece and sometimes there can be a small amount of kemp but is generally kemp free.  The books that I have describe the fleece as rough and robust but not harsh and that its main use is for carpets but my finished yarn is really nice.

This fleece can be prepared and spun however you want to work it and combing and spinning worsted style will minimise any prickle factor.  It is a warm white, not a brilliant white, but definitely not a creamy or yellow white like some other breeds.  I've not dyed mine but apparently it takes dye clearly but with a soft effect.

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared roving and my sample had quite a few black hairs in it along with varying amounts of white kemp, which fell out easily during spinning, plying, snapping and shaking to leave me with a lovely soft yarn.

My finished yarn is of medium to soft quality to the touch of the hand and is fairly white with a warm glow, although it has a matte finish and is 100g/338m.  My knitted piece for the project only took 5g/17m so I have plenty left to do whatever with.

Lleyn Sheep

The Lleyn Sheep (or Llŷn) was developed in north-west Wales in the early 1800's when it is believed that rams from the now extinct Irish longwool breed called Roscommon, named after Lord Roscommon, were bred with native Welsh Mountain ewes on the Lleyn Peninsula.  In 1810 Border Leicester bloodlines were added into the mix to produce the breed we know today as Lleyn.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 19th century.

The Lleyn Peninsular, outlined in red

The Lleyn is a medium sized sheep with a white face, white head and a black nose.  The ears and legs below the hock are free of wool.  Neither sexes grow horns.  They are very popular as a commercial breeding ewe now and can be found all over the UK but in the 1960's there were just 10 flocks in existence so the owners formed a breed society in 1970 and began promoting the breed and, at the time of writing, the breed has recently progressed from the Rare Breeds Survival Trust category 5: Minority (1500-3000 breeding ewes) and into category 6: Over 3,000 registered breeding ewes.

They produce a kemp free medium size fleece of 2-3kg that is a creamy white and quite matte with a staple length of 3-5 inches for the most part but coarser parts of the fleece can be longer.   

This fleece is best spun by flicking or combing the locks and spinning it worsted style to minimise any hairiness although if you separate the coarsest and hairiest parts of the fleece out I'm sure you could prepare and spin it anyway you like.  The nicest parts of the fleece has nice bounce qualities and can be used for everyday knitted garments.  The hairy parts would be good for household textiles that need to stand up to rough treatment.  If you want to dye it it does take dye well, with a touch of muted lustre.  

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared roving, which is really nice and clean this time.

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand, is a warm creamy white and is 50g/166m of double knit weight.  My knitted piece for the project only took 8g/26.5m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Soay Sheep

The Soay Sheep is another breed from the St Kilda archipelago, especially the island of Soay and also the island of Hirta and the breed's story is closely linked to that of the Boreray Sheep, as a breed also having being raised by the St Kildan population.

The Soay, pronounced "So-ay" and means Sheep Island in Norse, is a small, lean and very hardy sheep and is the most primitive of the breeds in the United Kingdom.  There is no wool on the face or legs, the face is dark with lighter makers over the eyes and muzzle.  The fleece sheds naturally every year and is usually a medium to dark brown but much lighter shades can be found up to light tan and then right down the other end of the scale to such a dark brown that it is almost black.  The St Kildans would collect the naturally shed wool once a year. In the early years of the 20th century, the lord who owned the islands at that time took small number of Soay sheep and gave some to his aristocratic friends for their estates and parklands, who then bred them as ornamental sheep and for their mouflon colour.

In 1932, after the evacuation of the residents of Hirta, a group of St Kildan men were sent back to the island of Soay to capture a flock of 107 Soay Sheep and move them to Hirta to expand the population and control the vegetation now growing on the abandoned island after the St Kildans took their own sheep with them when they evacuated.  After The National Trust took over the islands in 1956 scientists were allowed to study the breed and brought some over to mainland UK for study and breeding.  Today on Hirta there is a small number of seasonal staff that work for The National Trust and the island can only be visited through volunteer work programs.

They are, at the time of writing, in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust category 4: At risk (900-1500 registered breeding ewes).  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 1st century.

They produce a small size fleece of up to about 1kg that can vary from very fine to very coarse and hairy or kempy.  The staple length is between 1.5 and 4 inches long (3.8-10 cm long).  Ram fleece are often more coarser than ewe fleece.

Locks are blocky and indistinct with slightly pointed tips.  Sometimes they are double coated and other times they're not.  For spinning, you can spin from gently opened locks or card the locks but there is generally a lot of skin flakes that is difficult to remove and so mini combs is the best way to remove most of that.

Use of the yarns spun from Soay depends on the quality of the fleece and traditionally the St Kildans used the finest fibres to make underwear with the rest being used to make tweedy fabric. 

I bought this in as pre-prepared de-haired roving but there was quite a lot of long coarse white hairs which I removed before and during spinning.  It was also full of black hairs and black kemp which mostly dropped out during spinning and plying and then more dropped out when I skeined it up, snapped it, shook it out, washed it, shook it some more.  The more I shook it out the more kemp dropped out and the softer and softer the skein felt.

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand and you can feel the prickly kemp that is still in there and is 44g/138m of double knit weight, so I lost about 6g worth of kemp with all the shaking out.  It's not as soft as the Boreray but it's a reasonable yarn.  My knitted piece for the project only took 8g/25m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Boreray Sheep

The Boreray Sheep are a very small breed of primitive short tailed sheep that is descended from the now extinct Scottish Tan Face mixed with Hebridean Blackface bloodlines.  The females have horns that are thinner than the males and are curved.  Rams grow horns that are especially large and they spiral beyond 360°.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 19th century.   

The history of the breed is quite interesting and very complex.  They are from St Kilda, which is a group of four small islands called Hirta, Boreray, Soay and Dùn, and a number of sea stacks that are about 112 miles west of Mainland Scotland. The islands are thought to have been permanently occupied about 2,000 years ago, although there is evidence of Bronze Age occupation dating back to over 4,000 years ago.  

Due to the location of the islands any population would rely on sheep and fishing for their livelihood with spinning of wool done by the women and weaving done by the men and used the wool from all of the sheep, both feral and domesticated, and all from all breeds within the small group of islands.  The population peaked at just under 200 on Hirta in the 1600's with just 36 inhabitants left by 1930. The Islands were evacuated in 1930 after they all almost died from starvation following a particularly hard winter and they relocated elsewhere. The St Kildan's never owned the land on which they lived and worked for a non-resident lord and ownership changed many times, usually between the MacLeods and MacDonalds of Skye.  After the evacuation ownership was in the hands of Lord Dumfries, the fifth Marquess of Bute until his death in 1956, when ownership transferred to the National Trust for Scotland.

Whilst their sheep and cattle were ferried off Hirta they had kept a second flock of domestic sheep on Boreray as a backup in case anything untoward happened to their main flock.  A group of inhabitants would visit once a year to collect the fleece but the trip was dangerous and a group had been stranded on the island for the entire winter one year.  In the last few years before they were evacuated there were not enough able-bodied men to make the trip and so the sheep on Boreray returned to being wild and feral.  Descendants of those sheep are still there today. 

In the 1970's half a dozen sheep were removed from the island as part of a conservation effort to protect their bloodlines and there are now a few small flocks of Boreray Sheep in other areas of Britain.  In 1999 there was an estimate of just 74 ewes and 10 rams and by 2012 there was 204 ewes registered with The Rare Breeds Survival Trust and the numbers have been increasing year on year and in 2017 they were moved from Category 2: Critical to Category 3: Vulnerable (500-900 breeding ewes), where they remain as of the time of writing.

The fleece are small, usually 900-1600g and is usually creamy white or tan, with a small proportion being grey or dark brown and lambs can be born completely black or with large patches of black and whilst they do occasionally stay that colour they usually change to cream or tan.  Sometimes they have dark rump patches and dark collar, particularly rams.  They shed their fleece naturally, usually by July, although some shearing may be necessary in older sheep who do not moult their fleece as easily as younger individuals.  The fleece can vary greatly with some having a fine undercoat and others having long hair like fibres and everything in between.  The staple length can range between 2 and 6 inches.

 

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared roving which was sourced from a Rare Breeds Survival Trust breeder and my purchase helps to maintain the rare breed sheep.  

There was lots of little bits of vegetable matter in the roving, which I removed before or during spinning, which was a challenge due to the shortness of the staple but its very soft and I am very happy with the results.  My finished yarn is 43g/155m of double knit weight yarn.

 My knitted piece for the project only took 8g/29m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Jacob Sheep

Jacob Sheep has got to be the fleece that I am most familiar with.  I have prepared and spun countless fleece of this breed over the years.  In fact, it was the first breed of sheep fleece that I bought when I was learning to spin.

The Jacob sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "Other UK Native Breeds" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there are over 3000 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society.

A little over a year ago we went on a family visit to Charlcote Park, Warwickshire.  In the gatehouse is a display that claims that their ancestor, George Lucy, introduced the first ever flock of Jacob sheep to England in 1756.  I wrote about that visit in this post here.  This is most likely true as that is just a few years before these sheep became popular with landed gentry who owned large estates and used them as ornamental sheep.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 17th century.

Their true origins are not known for definite but there has long been speculation that they are related to the sheep mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible .  According to the Book of Genesis 30:31-43. Jacob took every speckled and spotted sheep from Laban's flock, his father-in-law, as payment for his work and bred them.  In a dream God told him to use only spotted rams for breeding and soon every sheep in the flock was spotted.  The sheep, previously just known as piebald sheep, was given the name of Jacob sometime during the 20th century.  

A study in 2009 found the Jacob to be more closely linked to sheep from Africa and South-west Asia than to British breeds, although all domestic breeds can be traced back to an origin within "the Fertile Crescent", an area in the Middle-East spanning Iraq, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, north Kuwait, south Turkey, western Iran, northern Egypt and Cyprus.  Many of the sheep were piebald in nature and a sheep expert at the Israeli Agriculture Ministry has been quoted as saying that British Jacob was not indigenous to ancient Israel and the sheep's resemblance to that described in the Bible is just a coincidence and that "Jacob Sheep are related to Jacob the same was the American Indians are related to India".  

They have been bred in England for more than 350 years and are well documented here and it is accepted that they are a British Breed.  Jacob sheep were first introduced to North America in the early-20th Century and due to selective breeding differences there are now significant differences between North American Jacob and British Jacob sheep.  I am only interested in the British Jacob and this is what I will be writing about.

The Jacob is a small build sheep with a badgerface, black muzzle and cheeks and a white blaze. The legs are free of wool below the knees and the head is free of wool forward of the horns and on the cheeks. They are polycerate, which means they can have two, four or six horns and this is in both sexes, although the males horns tend to be larger and more impressive.  Most British Jacob sheep have just two horns but there are some that have more. It is a piebald breed with fleece that ranges from cream and brown to almost black and is very similar in texture and handle to Down's breed of sheep. 

The fleece quality varies from fine to coarse and some fleece include kemp.  None of the raw fleece that I have ever had, and I've had quite a lot, have ever had any kemp in them.  They produce a fleece that generally weighs between 1.5kg and 2.75kg that has a soft to medium handle with a staple length of  between 3 and 6 inches long (7.5-18 cm long) and is usually 32-34 microns.  It is light, soft, springy and open and there is usually a difference in the length of the staples of the different colours within the same fleece and I have written about this in the past.

This fleece can be carded or combed using Viking combs.  How you handle the different colours is entirely at the spinners discretion.  You can separate them out and spin just black/brown and just white/cream or you can blend them together to produce a whole range of shades of grey, depending on how much of each colour you blend.  In the past I have produced natural coloured gradient yarns by varying the amount of each colour that is blended together.  Even if you do choose to spin the black/brown and white/cream separately it is inevitable that there will be an amount of fleece that you cannot separate totally and will make a grey or multi-coloured yarn from this anyway.  Also, don't be fooled into thinking that you cannot dye the dark parts of the fleece.  I have done this several times.  On the darkest parts you will need strong dark colours but you can achieve navy blue, dark green and dark red for examples.  You can also dye the grey in an array of colours with the blackest of the fibres showing through to produce marled yarns which can be very striking.

Yarns spun from Jacob fleece can be used for a whole variety of items and this will depend on the quality of the fleece that you spin from, which varies too greatly for me to say for certain what it can make.  That decision, in this case, is entirely in the creators hands. 

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared fibre in a box containing 50g each of four British Breeds and I also had a 25g sample that I got with another pack that I stretched it out to the same length as the 50g and spun them together at the same time.  It was the most coarse and just horrible Jacob wool that I have ever encountered.  It was also full of kemp, which I tried to remove as I spun and ended up having to use tweezers after I had spun it to pull out all the nasty kemp that was sticking out and I did this in short lengths, knit that bit, cleaned up another length and then knit with that and I did this until I had knitted my sampler.  Pulling the kemp out greatly improved the quality but it still wasn't as nice as when I've bought it in as fleece from local farms. If this is the standard of Jacob that retailers are selling to spinners then I finally understand why a lot of fellow spinners say that they don't like Jacob and complain about how horrible it is.  I could have spent the time combing some black Jacob fleece that I still have left from fleece I bought in a few years ago but I thought I'd use this seeing as it was just the right amount for my needs.

My finished yarn is of poor quality to the touch of the hand and you can feel the prickly kemp.  My knitted piece for the project only took 12g/28m and I threw the rest of it in the bin.