Sheep Washing

Fancy a dip? Sheep get thrown in at the deep end in this glimpse of late Victorian farming

More a sheep dunk than a sheep dip - its sink or swim for this flock. The arrival of the film camera in the mid 1890s captured farming methods that were much older. The filmmaker here was Cockermouth draper William Henry Youdale, who had many hobbies, including oil painting rural scenes. After he acquired a film camera we are fortunate that he again turned his eye to the countryside, as an alternative to the more common urban scenes.