Posting 1 Digital Archiving and Exmoor Sheep Records
Over 2024, The Friends have been busy archiving, digitising and digitally archiving the many items held in our collections. These archiving activities often allow, and indeed often require, time spent looking in depth at material held in the collections. That has certainly been the case over this year. It has involved looking at photographs in more detail and reading printed material in more depth. These activities are necessary to help with the decision-making process about how best to catalogue and describe items and the best tags and categories to apply.
In some cases, this aspect of archiving work can throw up new insights and set off a new train of research and recently our interest was piqued by two sets of Stock Diaries held in our collection. They are written by Robert Tait Little Robert Tait Little – hoaroak and Bill Little Little – hoaroak. These men were not related but both were shepherds from the Scottish Borders, who lived and worked on Exmoor from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. Their stock diaries hold a wealth of information about the sheep raised on several Exmoor hill farms including, for example, Badgeworthy, Duredon, Winstitchen, Toms Hills and Hoar Oak to name but a few. In some cases, they also recorded other bits of information which, over the years, have proved invaluable to the work of The Friends. See for example this item about Shepherd John Renwick of Hoar Oak. Renwick – hoaroak
We noticed that both men had recorded in their diaries the origin of rams used for breeding Cheviot sheep on Exmoor and the links of these breeding rams back to Scottish farms in the Borders. Although the two shepherds’ diaries span over 100 years it seems this tradition of importing fresh blood from Scotland continued through their time on Exmoor. Bill Little even left behind photographs of some of his prize winning rams. The image, shown above, is donated by Bill’s son, David Little and is notated as follows: ‘Prize winning rams from Hawick Market in Scotland’ the date is around 1960 and the photo is believed to be taken in a field near Rose Cottage, Simonsbath. With the help of a great friend of The Friends – Nora Solesbury, who lives in the Scottish Borders and has a lifetime’s expertise in sheep, sheep breeding and sheep markets – we’ve been trying to unlock the stories held in Robert’s and Bill’s diaries. Our research has formed a series of postings on FaceBook and Instagram which are being collected here into one blog so….. keep an eye out as the blog is updated throughout January 2025 with the complete story – at least the story to date – about ‘Scottish Shepherds, Stock Diaries and Sheep Breeding on Exmoor.’
Posting No. 2 Two Shepherd Littles. Two sets of Diaries.
Robert Tait Little and Bill Little were both shepherds on Exmoor, both came from the Scottish Borders and both had strong links to Hoar Oak Cottage. Despite sharing a surname, the men were not related. Robert Tait Little – hoaroak and Bill Little Little – hoaroak.
Both Robert Little and Bill Little are remembered for their knowledge of, and expertise in, breeding sheep – especially Scottish Cheviots and Blackfaced – the two breeds of sheep imported onto Exmoor by Frederic Winn Knight of Simonsbath. Part of their job as shepherds involved keeping records, and both men kept stock diaries which have, thankfully, survived and been shared with The Friends of Hoar Oak Cottage who have digitised and saved them in the archive.
Stock diaries are kept by shepherds to record the day to day, week to week or even annual records of what happened with their sheep and include details of, for example, the monthly ‘head count’ of the flock, including live sheep, deaths or losses – often described as ‘gone amissing.’ The diaries also included the numbers of lambs born, sales at market, shearing dates, prices obtained for wool and meat as well as records of the rams used to breed with in any particular year.
The photo on the right is of Robert Tait Little’s diaries from 1889 to just before he died in 1907. Small and neatly ruled notebooks they hold sheep records from across the Exmoor Hill Farms from his time as Head Shepherd for, firstly, Frederick Winn Knight and then for the Fortescue Estate. One of the diaries is still with the family. These four were discovered by The Friends family historian, Nicky Rowberry, in an unsorted and uncatalogued box of Fortescue material held in a back room of the Devon Records Office in Exeter. The Friends arranged for them to be digitised – thanks to the Devon Family History Society; and also, to be transcribed – thanks to many volunteers. These four diaries are now available to view at the Devon Record Office, catalogue reference 1262M/0/E/21/7&8. All five can be viewed digitally on request to The Friends. Email: info@hoaroakcottage.org
The photo on the left shows the collection of Bill Little’s stock diaries which cover the period from the mid-1930s to the late 1960s. These are a combination of ordinary notebooks as well as more modern stock record books printed for the Fortescue Estate. The later include copy pages (flimsies) used with carbon paper in order to make tear out copies, one for the shepherd, one for the Estate and one left in the stock diary.
In Posting 3 we share a very precious Stock Diary which is the record for Hoar Oak Cottage.
