Over the many years that The Friends of Hoar Oak Cottage have been researching the people, the place and the lives associated with the cottage, many links to Scottish shepherds on Exmoor have emerged. These shepherds – some single, some accompanied by their wives and families – were employed by Frederic Knight who had taken the Exmoor Estate over from his father John Knight and instigated what some call a ‘sheep ranching experiment’. Frederic wanted to raise sheep on Exmoor in the style of the Scottish border sheep herdings. He not only bought Scottish sheep for his experiment but also employed Scottish shepherds – some to deliver herds of Cheviot and Blackface sheep down to Exmoor from the Borders, some were employed to be the full-time, live-in shepherd responsible for a particular Exmoor herding. And some did both. Shepherds delivering a flock of sheep might stay on for a while, perhaps be employed temporarily as an Exmoor shepherd, perhaps meet a local girl and get married and stay in Devon.
The first of these Scottish Shepherds that we looked at were, of course, those directly associated with Hoar Oak Cottage. In undertaking this research an early, and fascinating, discovery was that 3 of the 4 Scottish shepherds who worked at Hoar Oak Cottage – Shepherds Davidson, Renwick and Johnstone – were all related. They were first and second cousins descended from John and Janet Johnstone of Greenburn near Crawfordjohn in Lanarkshire. The Johnstone Scottish roots run strong in The Friends of Hoar Oak Cottage charity – four of the trustees are descendants – and one is the charity’s Genealogist. Nicky has produced a family tree of the 3 cousins on the Hoar Oak herding which can be found on her own website here http://peasantstopuddles.org/cousins.htm James Maxwell Johnstone at Hoar Oak Cottage is a distant Great Uncle to Nicky but she has a much more direct link through her 2 x Great Grandfather William Johnstone who was shepherd, with his wife and children, at the Badgeworthy Herding. You can read about that link here: http://peasantstopuddles.org/johnstone.htm
The four Hoar Oak Cottage shepherds linked to Scotland have been quite well researched. The last, Archie Jackson was not a cousin to the other three and came from Northumberland. More can be found out about all four on these links:
William Davidson https://hoaroakcottage.org/?s=davidson
John Renwick https://hoaroakcottage.org/people/renwick/
James Maxwell Johnstone https://hoaroakcottage.org/people/johnstone/
Archie Jackson https://hoaroakcottage.org/people/jackson/
Another early, and fascinating, discovery when researching the Scottish Shepherds on Exmoor was finding the diaries of Robert Tait Little – employed by Frederic Knight to be Head Shepherd from around 1871. Robert and his wife Jane and children came from Dumfries and he had the onerous task of being the Head Shepherd to the burgeoning numbers of Scottish ’emigrant’ shepherds heading down to Exmoor. A Head Shepherd had to be knowledgeable in sheep management and husbandry as well as in the leadership and care of the shepherds and families living and working at the herdings high up in the remote hills of Exmoor. Robert Tait Little seems to have excelled at this role and, thankfully for us, kept diaries. These are known as Stock Diaries – the records of every aspect of sheepfarming on each of the Exmoor herdings – Larkbarrow, Winstitchen, Toms Hill, Hoar Oak, The Mines, Duredon and so on and so forth. An extraordinary record these diaries also, and happily for us, contain little notes and jottings about who was the shepherd on a herding for a particular year, when one shepherd left and another arrived, the train fare for a trip back to Scotland for a funeral and what happened when a shepherd, sadly, went mad. From this information, and from data in Roger Burton’s splendid book – The Heritage of Exmoor ISBN 0 9514419 0 6 – The Friends began compiling a list of all of the Scottish shepherds on Exmoor.
There are several other pages on the website about the Scottish shepherds on Exmoor. You can read more on this link ………….. https://hoaroakcottage.org/scottish-shepherds/
More recently The Friends supported research undertaken by Leo Baker at the University of Exeter into the success or otherwise of John and Frederic Knight’s attempts to ‘modernise’ and ‘innovate’ agriculture on Exmoor. This brought even more evidence into The Friend’s hands about the Scottish shepherds brought down to Exmoor and enabled us to add more names to the increasingly lengthy list of who they were, which herdings they worked on and where, in the Borders, they came from. And probably, most interestingly, how they were related through blood, marriage or other links.
Our links with the Crawfordjohn Heritage Centre https://www.crawfordjohn.org – housed in the church that was once at the heart of the community of Scottish shepherds who came to work at Hoar Oak Cottage – has helped to bring the physical links between the Scottish Borders and Exmoor a bit closer. The Friends have an exhibition in the Centre which talks about these links and some information leaflets for people to take away. A request to refresh the exhibition and share any new insights has led to a new project for The Friends. To finally bring together all of the information they have about all of the Scottish shepherds on Exmoor. How the links first began, how the links were established, how men and families and sheep and dogs came to be recruited in the Scottish Borders and fetch up on Exmoor – some to stay and become well known local families, some to return home and some to ‘disappear’ and never be heard of again. Or will they never be heard of?
Watch this space for news and updates and postings which will help to bring this story of the Scottish Shepherds on Exmoor together for us all to share. And of course, as is the way of the world, to trigger new questions and hopefully bring new insights to the topic.
Are you interested? Are you related to a Scottish Shepherd on Exmoor? Want to get involved? Want to get in touch?
Email: info@hoaroakcottage.org We’d love to hear from you.