The Lincoln Longwool Sheep

摘要

Lincolnshire has been a renowned wool producing region since medieval times, when in some years over 3,000,000 lbs (around 1,350 tonnes) of wool were exported to the Continent. The evidence is not completely clear but it appears that these sheep were only about the size of a modern Shetland sheep and yielded around 2 lbs of high quality, short, fine wool. The breed fell into decline in the face of competition from the Spanish Merino in the early fifteenth century. The Lincoln Longwool sheep appears to have been developed in the sixteenth century to produce an alternative form of wool designed for a quite different purpose from the short wools. The earliest descriptions talk of a huge sheep carrying a massive weight of wool, but the wool was coarse. The wool was often sent to Norfolk where it was worsted spun. This not only preserved the lustre but also produced an incredibly strong thread, ideal for the weaving trade and producing very hard-wearing cloth.