Lincoln

The Lincoln is the largest of the English longwools, a group that also holds the Cotswold, the Leicester Longwool and the Wensleydale. It had an outsized effect on sheep breeding worldwide, and like the rest of the longwools it is now globally rare.

The longwools may descend from white-fleeced sheep the Romans landed in Britain. A longwool sheep is drawn in the Luttrell Psalter, made in Lincolnshire between 1320 and 1340, and a curly-fleeced sheep appears on a brass memorial in a Gloucestershire church around 1460.

The breeding history runs in a circle. In the 1700s Robert Bakewell used the old Lincoln to help create his new Leicester. Lincolnshire breeders then took rams from Bakewell's improved Leicesters and put them back over old coarse-wool Lincoln ewes, selecting the offspring for earlier maturity and better meat. That produced the improved Lincoln.

It came to public notice in the mid-1800s when the Royal Show added classes for it. Wool was worth a great deal then, and a pen of these very large, very dignified sheep made an impression.

Expect a slow-maturing animal that does best in cooler country.