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The rare Wensleydale sees wool value soar
While most sheep farmers are complaining about rock-bottom prices for their wool, a few are riding the crest of a wave – thanks to an historic Yorkshire breed.
The value of Wensleydale wool is soaring. But that is partly because there are so few Wensleydales left to provide it.
The breed has lost out to the Blue-faced Leicester over a century of competition for good ram lines to cross with hardy little ewes (Swaledales and similar) to produce lambs on the uplands.
The Leicesters are famous for their wool. But it comes out less fine in 'mules' and standard Dales wool is currently fetching about 5p a kilo, raw, from the carpet industry. The average for all wool sold to the British Wool Marketing Board has crept back up to 72.5p, after a very bad few years, and the cost of a shearing is roughly 50p. In striking comparison, Wensleydale wool is fetching close to 2.39, straight off the sheep – more when processed and more when the wool board is not acting as middleman.
The board drew attention to the phenomenon last week with a press release on a Sussex-based group, led by two female shepherds, Julia Desch and Sheila Leech, who have been given a special licence to deal in their own wool, to encourage the development of their business.
They already sell Wensleydale wool at farmers' markets and craft fairs and are now widening their market to the world, over the internet.
Their speciality is natural colours from their own flocks – ranging from white to black through silver grey, steel grey and raisin brown.
But the same colours can be bought from an even longer-established specialist outlet in Yorkshire – the Wensleydale Longwool Sheepshop at Cross Lanes Farm, Garriston, near Leyburn.
It was started in 1989, by Ann Hodgson, and continued after she retired by two people who worked for her, Ann Bolam and Ruth Tombleson. They run a small flock of their own, for display purposes, but buy most of their raw fleece in from the wool board, then make the wool and knit it into garments, selling for 80-120.
Ironically, there are not that many Wensleys left in Yorkshire. The wool has to be cared for while still on the sheep's back, and that is a job too many for farmers whose main interest is meat. Also, it seems, fashion has played its part.
Lynn Clouder, secretary of the Wensleydale Longwool Sheep Breeders' Association, said: "A Wensleydale sire produces a lamb with a brown face and the farmers like a black face for some reason."
And one of Yorkshire's top breeders, Yvonne Mudd of Thistle Hill, near Harrogate, said much the same: "Hill men like a face that stands out and looks good."
She is one of the striking number of women working with Wensleydales – partly because the sheep are notably amiable; partly because of the business association with weavers and knitters.
Could hard-headed farmers really be ignoring a business opportunity because of macho prejudices? Certainly the wool board thinks they should look again at the sums. It quotes Julia Desch:
"If you take a hogget around 18 months old, it will have yielded 6kg of wool by that stage of its life. Its sheepskin will have a value of around 150. And surplus male hoggets can produce up to 30kg of boned-out meat with a retail value of around 7 a kilo."
According to the Wensleydale Longwool Sheep Breeders' Association: "The breed originated from a cross between a since-extinct local longwool breed from the region of the River Tees and an outstanding Dishley Leicester ram named 'Bluecap'... born in 1839 in the hamlet of East Appleton, five miles NNW of Bedale in North Yorkshire. His unique qualities, which determined the breed type, were his dark skin, superb quality of wool and size – 203 kgs (448 lbs) as a two-shear. The breed type was not named until 1876, when a name was required for classes at the Yorkshire Show."
The website adds that the Wensleydale has "the highest genetic resistance to scrapie of all recognised sheep breeds in the United Kingdom". But for various reasons, it now falls into the definition of a rare breed – hovering just above the 'at risk' category in fact – with only 786 breeding ewes reported in a 2007 census.
Why is its wool suddenly back in fashion?
A wool board expert, Mark Powell, said this week: "You don't always know exactly what is happening in the market. But somebody told me it had become desirable for dolls' hair in America, and that makes sense, in view of its qualities. There was a time when Bluefaced Leicester wool was on top and fetched 6 or 7 a kilo because you could blend it with mohair and not see the difference. The price of Wensleydale now is nowhere near that, of course, but it's very good in today's market."
The Leyburn shop is on the web at wensleydalelongwoolsheepshop.co.uk. See woolcraftwithwensleydale for more on the Sussex specialists.
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