Corriedale

The other day, a customer was browsing our wool and asked me “what is Corriedale”? At the time, she was looking at our hand-dyed Cloudspun, a blend of Corriedale and Mohair. Of course, my answer was “a sheep”, but I realised that I did not know more than that, so I thought I had better dig deeper.

To me, Corriedale sounds as though it might be an old Lake District sheep breed. As it turns out, it originated in New Zealand. It was bred in the 1880s by a man called James Little who worked at the Corriedale Estate in North Otago. He wanted to produce a sheep that would have the grazing requirements somewhere between the lush lowlands preferred by British breeds and the sparse, dry grazing preferred by Merino sheep. Initially, he tried crossbreeding the British Romney with Merinos without much success, so he tried a Lincoln Longwool and Merino cross, with unsatisfactory results. It was, in fact, a man called William Davidson, on a different estate, who successfully bred Lincoln rams with medium wool Merino ewes, creating the foundation stock for the Corriedale breed. The name ‘Corriedale’ was formally recognised in 1911, a year after a breed association for Corriedales was founded.

Within a few years, the Corriedale had been exported to several other countries around the world, from Europe to South Africa and it became one of the most numerous sheep breeds worldwide. By 1970, for example, it was half the national herd of Uruguay, estimated at about 8.5 million and by 2016 in New Zealand alone, the number was reported to be around 3 million. Now, along with the Polwarth, the Corriedale is the principal sheep breed reared on the Falkland Islands. This is why we have come across it – wool from the Falklands falls into the category of British wool and is used by British spinners such as West Yorkshire Spinners and John Arbon.

The Corriedale is a polled sheep – it has no horns – unlike, for example, the Norfolk Horn or Merino. It is a medium to large sized sheep, and is both white woolled and white faced, with dark hooves and dark skin on its nostrils. Apparently the ewes make good mothers, although they are not hugely prolific. The breed is dual purpose – it is reared both for wool and for mutton. The fleeces are heavy, weighing around 5 to 7kg, and have a longish staple (150 to 180mm) and fibre diameter of 25 to 32 microns. This makes the wool soft and suitable for a range of uses, from military uniforms to knitting wools and worsteds.

Every time I look into the different breeds of sheep I find myself amazed by the variety that there is out there and how little we all know about them. I honestly believed, until I did this research, that the Corriedale was a rare breed, like so many of our British breeds. How wrong could I be? Anyway, we have several yarns with Corriedale: John Arbon’s Yarnadelic, for example, is 100% Corriedale. I have already mentioned our hand-dyed Cloudspun. Some of West Yorkshire Spinners Solstice and Exquisite Lace and Exquisite 4 ply are stated to be ‘Falklands Islands’ wool, and my bet is that there is at least a portion of Corriedale in there.

Every time I look into the different sheep breeds that are out there, I realise how much I don’t know and how much more I want to know. Talk about a rabbit hole. I know that Romney is a soft wool, but have never heard of Lincoln Longwool or Polwarth. Every day is a learning day in this business.