Ford End water mill - the sheep wash
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Ford End water mill - the sheep wash by Chris Allen as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Ford End water mill - the sheep wash
Image: © Chris Allen Taken: 15 May 2016
The tail race was set up as a sheep wash to clean the wool on the sheep before shearing to improve it. Not the same as a sheep dip. Boards placed between the two wooden posts under the unguarded bridge dammed about 1.5 m of water. The sheep were dropped into this pool and a farmhand in oilskins stood in the square cast iron box (the pulpit) and used a crook to dunk the sheep and probably to also hold them under water cascading from the spout on the extreme right. The clean sheep swam along the narrow brick channel until they touched bottom and could climb out. There is a photograph of the wash in use in 1939 and the Society is hoping to restore this unusual feature.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
51.839909
Longitude
-0.635716