Clun Forest

Clun Forest takes its name from the market town of Clun in southwest Shropshire, near the Welsh border. The forest is not woodland. It is upland grazing, and it suits sheep.

Shepherds in eastern Wales and southwestern Shropshire shaped the breed over more than two centuries, selecting for hardiness, fertility, prolificacy, milk, mothering and longevity. The Reverend Joseph Plymley described them for the Board of Agriculture in 1803 as polled and white-faced, and they were still white-faced in the 1830s. The dark head came later, from crossing with Long Mynd, Hill Radnor and Shropshire.

The breed society formed in Britain in 1925 to, in its own words, secure the purity of lineage and fixity of type. What came out of it combines hill hardiness with lowland productivity.

North America's population starts in 1970, when Tony Turner imported two rams and thirty-nine ewes, with one more ram going to Nova Scotia shortly after.

One unusual thing about this breed: its association prohibits showing. Selection is for production, and the society has deliberately kept the show ring out of it.