Mystery of sheep being thrown off a bridge is solved

It caught my eye as soon as I saw it: An old black-and-white photo of two men throwing a sheep off a bridge. A host of questions immediately sprang to mind. Where? When? Why?

The photo itself didn’t give much away. Two men with their back to the camera. A crowd of onlookers. A faded date written in pencil on the back: 1974.

Soon your suggestions were flooding in. Some were distinctly tongue-in-cheek, such as the two ideas Darling posted on the FWi forums. The first sheep ever to try bungee jumping or one of the entrants preparing for the annual “Miss Wet and Woolly Competition”, she said.

Hackedofffarmer sent us a similarly amusing comment, wondering if it showed some sort of sheep water skiing competition, while others feared the poor creature was suffering a case of mistaken identity and thought it was a lemming.

It felt like we were getting warm when Mopsa suggested it was being washed before shearing because clean fleeces are obviously more desirable.

Droverjess reckoned the picture looked older than 1974, believing it to have been taken back in the days when sheep were usually washed by hand in a small pool. During this process, he pointed out, the poor old shepherds got wet (and cold).

BillR also recalled sheep being washed by sending them across a deep part (known as a ”dub”) of a beck or a river, although it usually needed the first sheep to be thrown in to encourage the rest. But he had never seen a decoy sheep on a rope – or such a crowd of bystanders.

Now we know what these men are doing and why.

Katiecawthorpe told us her grandpa, Peter Pitcher, believed that the picture was taken at the River Wye at Ashford-in-the-Water in Derbyshire. Biofuelsimon agreed that was the spot, as did Jacobus, who found some blurb about it on the internet explaining it was originally a medieval packhorse bridge and sheep were, indeed, washed there before shearing. The lambs would be penned in a stone-walled pen on one side of the river and the mothers – thrown in at the other side – would swim across to their offspring, thus ensuring a good soaking.

The humorous suggestions, meanwhile, continued to arrive. The Beast reckoned it showed some sort of sheep-based life-saving device – pre-Baywatch, of course. And Taff thought it looked like a scene involving Shaun the Sheep from Wallace and Gromit.

But a consensus was building that it was Sheepwash Bridge at Ashford-in-the-Water. Mark Twelves was also sure it was there. The picture could well have been taken in 1974, he said, at a demonstration held by local farmers during the village’s annual “well-dressing” week. He would have been 12 at the time and he usually helped with the demonstration. He grew up in the village and still lives there.

David Weekes emailed me two modern photos of the bridge, while Sarah Brocklehurst of nearby Highfield Farm went one step further and put forward two names for the men pictured: Alan Atkin and Chris Furness. The practice of washing sheep in this way stopped in the early sixties when there was no price bonus given to washed wool, she said.

Kym Welfar told us she first saw the demonstration in 2002. Sheep, she said, are no longer launched into the river instead “burly and brave” farmers now enter the water and the sheep are gently lifted and placed in the water.

“The event is very enjoyable and usually ends with one or two spectators known to the farmers being legged and winged into the river for a dip.”

There is a postscript to this story. And how’s this for a coincidence? I went walking recently in the Peak District.

I drove to stay with some friends in Sheffield on Friday night and they had planned the walk for Saturday. Come Saturday morning, we drove out into the Peaks (an area I don’t know at all) pulled into the village where they’d decided to start the walk from – and, guess what? I saw a bridge that looked familiar. Yes, you’ve guessed it: We were in Ashford-in-the-Water.

* For more quirky news from the countryside, see Tim Relf’s Field Day Blog