i8 WESTMORLAND AGRICULTURE, 1800-1900 



they could winter at home, but it was more frequently broken than 

 observed, and as a remedy for this state of affairs Pringle wrote 

 to the Board of Agriculture in 1794 recommending " the reduction of 

 the stint, where such is already established, or the establishment of a 

 moderate stint, upon commons that are perfectly free, ought not to 

 be delayed one hour ; for at present they are of little, if of any, use, 

 either to those having a right of commonage, or to the nation at large." 

 The class of animals which were thus pastured on the commons 

 and fells and which constituted the animal wedth of the county, 

 was of the poorest description; Dr. Lonsdale writes : " Truly or not 

 in the record, it has been repeatedly stated that Cumberland and 

 Westmorland were the last counties in England to receive improve- 

 ments in husbandry," and from the evidence which is available it is 

 not too much to say that it would indeed be a bad case with farming 

 in any county in which it was in a more backward state than it was 

 in Westmorland in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Pringle 

 writing of the sheep says : " No attempt has yet been made to 

 improve either the carcase or the fleece. They are horned, dark or grey 

 faced, thick pelted, with coarse, strong, hairy wool. The whole flock 

 upon a farm is herded together, which is different from the practice in 

 those counties where sheep farming is thought to be best understood." 

 Housman gives a similar description of them. They were the common 

 Heath sheep, which were spread over the northern counties from Derby- 

 shire to Cumberland. Pringle does not mention the Herdwicks, and 

 the only pure breed he notes are the Silverdales in the extreme south 

 of the county, better known later as the Crag or Limestone Breed ; but 

 Housman (1800) mentions the introduction, by some gentlemen and 

 spirited farmers on the low lands, of the Bakewell and Lincolnshire 

 breeds of sheep, which he says with " proper crosses will no doubt 

 answer their expectations." There is no doubt that the unregulated 

 condition of the commons and fells at this time and for many years 

 after made it impossible for any but a heterogeneous type of sheep to be 

 kept ; entire male animals were indiscriminately pastured on the 

 commons, and it was not till a century later (1907) that an Act of 

 Parliament was passed prohibiting, when a majority of the com- 

 moners so desired, the pasturing of these animals on commons and 

 uninclosed wastes. 



