Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 1 (2006), p. 172

The Whitefaced Dartmoor is not one of the better-known breeds of sheep. Indeed, the Rural History Bibliography had no entry specifically on the breed until this book came along, and neither does the breed feature often in general books on sheep and sheep breeding. It is now regarded as one of the rare breeds.

It is a breed whose numbers are small, with no more than thirty registered flocks. It has its origins among the first sheep to withstand the rigours of life on Dartmoor, although its modern form has been established only during the last 150 years or so. A breed association was not established until 1951, brought together in defence of a breed that had experienced several decades of decline. Other breeds, such as the Scotch Blackface, and crosses of Border Leicester, Suffolk and other types had been introduced into Dartmoor farming especially during the 1920s and 1930s, pushing the Whitefaced Dartmoor back.

In keeping together to maintain the breed, the founders of the Whitefaced Dartmoor Sheep Breeders’ Association and their successors have proved about as hardy as the sheep themselves, and it is in celebration of the first half century of the association’s existence that this book has been produced.

The book is devoted to the men and women – the farmers, their families and the flockmasters – who have been responsible for upholding the Whitefaced Dartmoor tradition during the twentieth century. Their reminiscences and records of their flocks, successes at shows and sales, and aspects of farming life on Dartmoor form the bulk of the text. After a wide-ranging introductory chapter that seeks to set the sheep farming of Dartmoor, and the Whitefaced sheep in particular, into a historical and geographical context, 329 pages are devoted to these people, presented family by family. It is a substantial body of oral history, interspersed with other material. Although much of the text would have benefited from a stronger editorial hand, and an index would have been helpful, there is much raw material here for the historians of farming on Dartmoor in the twentieth century.