St Kilda: A Rosetta Stone for Early Sheep Races in the NE Atlantic Region? Prof Andrew Fleming FSA

It has recently been established that the ancestors of ‘Hebridean’ sheep were exported to the mainland from the Scottish archipelago of St Kilda (hence their C19 name). It’s now clear that three breeds of pre-modern sheep were introduced to St Kilda; in sequence, Soays, then Borerays, then St Kildas aka Hebrideans. As each new race was introduced to Hirta (the only habitable island) its predecessor was ‘exiled’ to the outlying island which has supplied its name.

Remarkably, four of the late 19th-century parkland flocks of St Kildas have survived in England, all derived from the ‘Windermere’ consignment of sheep. Their genetic profile, and that of potential surviving Hebrideans in the north of Scotland, may be of considerable interest for historians of domestic sheep, especially ‘Northern short-tails’. Traditional St Kildas were more variegated than the small black ‘parkland’ Hebrideans of today, which are often bred for the show ring.

These successive introductions underline both the general importance of sheep in the north-east Atlantic zone and the reciprocal relationship between sheep-keeping, woollen textiles and sea travel, especially in the Viking era.

Professor Andrew Fleming is a prehistorian and landscape archaeologist who has taught archaeology at the universities of Sheffield and Wales (Lampeter). As well as numerous articles in journals, he has written The Dartmoor Reaves, Swaledale: Valley of the Wild River, and St Kilda and the Wider World. His The Gravity of Feathers, a New History of St Kilda, was published by Birlinn in 2024. He now lives in Herefordshire and his current interests include longue durée topics such as transhumance, wood-pasture, ancient routeways, and long-term perceptions of regional landscapes.

This lecture was sponsored and hosted by the Society of Antiquaries of London in its apartments at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. The Society recorded the proceedings and, with permission of the speaker(s), made them available online here, and on its website at www.sal.org.uk. All rights reserved.