Sheepfolds galore

I had seen a public lecture advertised that caught my eye; it was about sheepfolds in the area, by Nigel Beidas. It sounded like the sort of topic that looks hilariously dull if you just see the title, but which is actually very interesting when you learn more about it. So when I figured I would not have to worry about my second job I decided to register. And my friend Charlotte did the same, so we went together.

We went to the vestry of a local chapel (one of the few that is still in use as a chapel, as far as I know). There we first witnessed the organisers overcoming some technical challenges; some people were attending the event via Zoom, but that did require the sound not creating destructive levels of feedback. And then the speaker was off!

He started by explaining and fluent Welsh that when he grew up in Nottingham had no idea that one day he would be standing in the Welsh chapel talking about Welsh sheepfolds in Welsh. That is how life turns out sometimes! And it turned out that he liked walking around in the area, and liked taking pictures of sheepfolds, and that when he retired his colleagues had given him a drone. And that allowed him to see his sheepfolds from the air. That way you get a perspective on the can't get standing right beside them. So after him having explored many of sheepfolds in the area, he had been asked to share his newfound knowledge with us.

He explained that the sheepfolds in our area were special, due to the landscape just being open and wide and not having many barriers in. That meant that quite many farms let their sheep graze in the same large area. And that in turn meant that when the farmers round up all the sheep, they need big general pen to gather them all, and then a plethora of smaller enclosures to separate the sheep from each different farm. In most of the UK, they can be of a smaller scale as the landscape has more walls and suchlike, so you don't mix sheep from many different farms. And I had noticed that quite many sheepfolds around here are veritable pieces of art, but I had not realised this was specific for the area, or why exactly this was.

He showed us many examples. Some were very higgledy-piggledy, and somewhere much more structured. Some were in excellent nick and some were falling into ruin. Some were right by the river, with a specific enclosure for first washing the sheep before you shear them. And he showed one near Mynydd Llandygai, where all houses have a patch of land, and people tended to have a few sheep, and the sheepfolds only need very small enclosures.

This man was not, as far as I know, a historian or anything like that; he just liked roaming around and taking pictures of sheepfolds. But he had been learning quite a lot about them anyway. And he was still keen to learn more! And when he was done and opened the floor for questions he did learn some more. One person the audience knew the name of one of the sheepfolds he had shown a picture of. The speaker had said it is difficult to find their names! And sometimes they went by several names, depending on who you asked. And one lady from the Carneddau partnership suggested they could combine his data with their LIDAR and see if anything interesting would show up.

Altogether it was only about an hour, but I was glad I went! I will really look with different eyes to the sheepfolds I will see around. And maybe I will even bump into the speaker!