Dales town shedding final link with sheep trading

Auctioneer George F. White has announced the sale of the Masham Auction Mart site, which will put paid to any lingering hopes the town might reclaim its place as a centre for the Dales sheep business.

The Wensleydale town lived off sheep trading for a thousand years and its huge central market square is still its outstanding feature.

But nowadays it smells of sheep only once a year, during the Masham Sheep Fair, in September, which was once the peak of a 52-week cycle.

The Vikings taught the locals how to farm sheep, from around 900 AD, and the monks of Jervaulx and Fountains Abbeys turned the business into an industry.

Sheep trading was still big in 1915, when Masham Auction Mart was set up on the edge of the town, to take the mess out of the market square.

But like many small marts, heavily reliant on local custom, it was sidelined by changes in farming practice, such as the growth of animal transportation, and held its last livestock sale in 2006.

One of the directors of the business, Gerald Broadley, said: "Masham was always a store market, albeit with a relatively small catchment area. BSE gave it its first knock in the late 1990s and then foot and mouth came as another blow. We have tried hard to keep the market going but harsh commercial realities have overtaken the mart."