A SUSSEX SHEEP-WASHING 



At Pevensey operations are on a much larger scale. 

 Here a small river, known locally as the Haven, flows 

 under an old stone bridge. Just in front of the bridge 

 is the washing done, the sheep being pushed and poled 

 right across the stream, which measures here perhaps 

 some seventy or eighty feet across. Pevensey Bridge 

 has undoubtedly been a notable sheep-washing place 

 for centuries past. Here must have been cleansed 

 during many and many a pleasant springtime the 

 thick winter fleeces of hundreds of thousands — nay, 

 of millions of sheep. During the brief washing season 

 some 5,000 sheep are annually washed here. They are 

 brought down day after day, a few hundreds at a time, 

 from the neighbouring farms, until the business is 

 ended and the last sheep has had its bath. Usually 

 the work begins in mid-May, shearing operations being 

 undertaken a week or two later. Now and then, when 

 May is an unusually cold month, the sheep-washing 

 takes place somewhat later, lingering on, in fact, until 

 the first days of June. 



The operations are very simple, yet very methodical 

 in their nature. On the east or further bank of the 

 stream the sheep are collected in pens. From these 

 they are passed to a little bay, formed by tall poles 

 firmly planted in the bed of the river. After being 

 well dipped, rolled, and turned over in this bay, the 

 unwilling animals — for they do not altogether relish 

 the order of the bath — are passed by the long poles 

 of the washers to the men stationed in mid-stream, 

 who continue the sousing, and send their charges 

 finally out to the western bank, where the sheep 

 emerge breathless, panting, and glad enough to find 

 themselves free from the attentions of the washers and 

 on the good firm land again. Right athwart the stream 

 is erected a narrow temporary platform of single planks. 



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