The Changing Distribution of Sheep in Britain

Abstract

?HEEP have played an important role in British agriculture ever since the Middle Ages. In 1952 Britain ranked third in the world in terms of sheep density and tenth in terms of total sheep population. The 1952 population of 20,859,819 sheep represents an average of 42 sheep for every hundred persons in Britain, 46 sheep for every hundred acres of agricultural land, 26 sheep for each agricultural worker, and 48 sheep for every agricultural holding. Equally striking, however, is the fact that for every five sheep of the 1937-39 period there were less than four in the years 1950-52. The 20 per cent decline in Britain's sheep population during the war and post-war period is an exaggeration of a trend which has continued irregularly since the first British agricultural returns were collected in 1866 (Fig. 1). If secular changes be disregarded, it appears that the British sheep population dropped from around 28 million in the 1870's to about 26 million between 1880 and 1910, and then to around 2412 million in the period 1925-39. Marked decreases in sheep numbers are associated with the two war periods, and the unusually severe winter of 1947 was responsible for a still further decline at a time when the post-war recovery had just gotten underway. The decline in sheep population has not been uniformly distributed throughout Britain. Although national crises, such as wars and severe winters, affect the sheep population in Wales and Scotland as well as in England, the decline in numbers of British sheep over the last 75 years has been restricted largely to England, whereas the sheep population of Wales and Scotland has remained relatively stable or even increased slightly. It is the purpose of this paper to consider the changing distribution of sheep in Britain, the factors influencing the change, and some of the economic and political problems resulting from the change. To understand the changing distribution of sheep in Britain one must first consider the interrelation of physical features and farming types (Fig. 3). Although flocks of sheep are found on general mixed farms scattered throughout Britain, the majority of sheep are concentrate( in three types of areas with distinctive physical environments and sheep farming economies: (1) intensive sheep grazing on the rich alluvial pastures of Romney Marsh. (2) grain (largely barley) and sheep production, with increasing emphasis on dairying toward the south, on the thin-soiled uplands of Cretaceous Chalk and Jurassic limestone which extend