Lincoln Longwool

The Lincoln developed in the rich lowland grazing of Lincolnshire and was improved over time, including through the influence of the improved Leicester longwool. It became renowned for size and heavy, lustrous wool and was exported widely in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where it was used to found or improve numerous breeds, particularly dual-purpose halfbreds combining longwool and Merino ancestry.

Lincoln Longwools are among the largest sheep breeds, white and polled, carrying a distinctive long, wavy or curled, lustrous fleece of coarse longwool. The breed is kept chiefly for this heavy, long-stapled wool, which is used for purposes suited to lustrous coarse wool.

The breed’s size and wool made it historically valuable as an improver of other breeds, a role reflected in the ancestry of several dual-purpose sheep worldwide.

Once far more numerous, the Lincoln Longwool is now a numerically small breed. It is listed by rare-breed and conservation organisations in its homeland and in other countries, which monitor such breeds because of their limited populations and heritage value. It is kept in the United Kingdom and in smaller numbers in North America, Australasia, and elsewhere.