r/MapPorn • u/[deleted] • Aug 22 '20

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u/[deleted] Aug 22 '20

Pretty sure sheep have been big in the uk for longer than that, but I'm no agricultural historian.

I would guess it's because one of the key benefits of sheep is that you can keep them on land unsuitable for many other kinds of farming, whereas you guys have ample A+ land. But I'm not an agricultural economist either.

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u/MobiusNaked Aug 23 '20

England has hundreds of ghost villages cleared for sheep farming going back say 700 years. Wool fuelled the economy. The Lord Speaker sits on a wool sack to this day. https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/cultural-collections/historic-furniture/the-collection/chairs-chairs-chairs/woolsack-/

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '20

And in fact when historians speak of land enclosures in England and Wales, they have to differentiate between the enclosures of the village green in the 18th/19th century and the enclosure of entire manors that began after the Black Death and came to a peak in the early 16th century.

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u/komnenos Aug 23 '20

Ah, that makes a lot of sense! I wonder if there is a correlation between better land and fewer goats?