Agricultural History Archives

Gerard Spooner and the Scottish shepherds on Exmoor.

22/07/25

During The Friend’s first major project on Hoar Oak Cottage, funded by Heritage Lottery in 2011, an interesting newspaper article...

02/01/25

Digital Archiving and Exmoor Sheep Records Over 2024, The Friends have been busy archiving, digitising and digitally archiving the many...

17/06/24

We are loving these recent donations to the Friends of Hoar Oak Cottage Archive of two photos from Chris Jones....

23/01/24

How much did it cost? The Friends continue to research the Scottish shepherds on Exmoor – how they came to...

01/12/23

Did the occupants of Hoar Oak Cottage have hobbies? It’s very hard to imagine them having any time for hobbies....

19/03/23

Elsewhere on the website can be found information about what life was like for children growing up at Hoar Oak...

16/07/18

It is said that Eskimos have a hundred words for snow. Exmoor shepherds may have had as many for sheep....

05/11/17

Exmoor may seem like a forbidding, remote or even extreme environment to our modern minds. To the Scottish shepherds who...

05/07/17

Forty-nine years ago, as a teenager fresh from school, I stumbled across an Exmoor farm and asked if I could...

11/06/17

When the early shepherds travelled to Exmoor from Scotland with their sheep it was not surprising that they continued to...