Sheepwashing, Thornton Rust North Yorkshire

The last days of the ancient practice of sheep washing as seen near Thornton Rust, a small medieval village a couple of miles east of Bainbridge in Upper Wensleydale, in 1965. The practice had already died out in many places, but here the sheep continue to be rounded up into a dry stone washfold and thrown into a pool where a farmer stands waist deep in water, grabs them by the horns and gives them all a good dipping, with the local children looking on.

This film originated from S F Sanderson of the Institute of Folk Life Studies at the School of English, University of Leeds, which specialised in studying local dialects (now the English Language Research Group). The sheep look to be Swaledale sheep, although these look similar to Kendal Rough Fell that are kept slightly further to the north west. It isn’t clear when the practice of washing sheep in washfolds, usually in June just prior to clipping, ceased. Sheep dipping, using pesticides to eradicate sheep scab, was made compulsory in 1905 and stopped in the 1960s – it was re-introduced in 1976 and stopped in 1992 amid concerns of the side effects of organophosphate pesticides (many seeking compensation).