Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

In the south west of Yorkshire, at and about Bradfield, and in Derbyshire, they feed all their sheep in winter with holly leaves and bark, which they eat more greedily than any grass. To every farm there is so many holly trees; and the more there is the farm is dearer; but care is taken to plant great numbers of them in all farms thereabouts. And all these holly trees are smooth-leaved and not prickly. As soon as the sheep sees the shepherd come with an axe in his hand they all follow him to the first tree he comes at, and stands all in a round about the tree, expecting impatiently the fall of a bough, which, when it is falling, all as many as can eats thereof, and the shepherd going further to another tree, all those that could not come in unto the eating of the first follow him to this, and so on. As soon as they have eaten all the leaves they begin of the bark and pares it all off.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

John Guillim also tells us that “there is a kind of holly that is void of these prickles and of gentler nature, and therefore called free-holly, which in my opinion is the best holly” (Guillim 1660); John Evelyn that holly “is with us of two eminent kinds, the prickly, and smoother leaved, or as some term it, the free-holly, not unwelcome when tender, to sheep, and other cattle” (Evelyn 1670); and Pryme, a folklorist rather than a biologist, reports hearsay over observation. However, while leaves on young, and in the lower limbs of mature, trees have three to five sharp spines on each side, pointing alternately upward and downward, leaves of the upper branches in mature trees lack spines. The evolutionary reason is obvious: sheep, cattle and other potential predators can’t fly.

Jeffrey Radley:

Village names containing ‘hollin’ as a component are rare, but there is a Hollinsend, Sheffield, and Hollingworth, Cheshire. On the high moors trees grow best in the entrenched cloughs, and there are several indicative names such as Holling Dale on Bradfield Moors; Hollingworth Clough, Hayfield; and Hollins Clough, Dovedale. Near Bolsterstone, Yorkshire, there is Hollin Busk and Hollin Edge Height (Radley 1961).

I haven’t read Martin Spray’s article (Spray 1981).

In Campoo, on the southern slopes of the Cantabrian Range:

The basis of livestock feed was and continues to be pasture, meadow grass and agricultural produce (wheat, barley, potatoes, cabbage, alfalfa, carob, etc.), although it is now common to supplement this diet with feed and products brought from elsewhere. Family economics of just a few decades ago did not allow this type of luxury. Cattle, sheep, horses and even pigs grazed the countryside, although today only cattle and horses remain common. In the past, when food was scarce, it was necessary to resort to foraging wild resources. Branches of elm, holly or poplar were cut so that cattle, sheep and goats could take advantage of their leaves; weeds and other wild vegetables such as white asphodel, nettles, thistles (Sonchus asper) or field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) were used as a supplement for pigs, rabbits and chickens; heather and gorse (Ulex gallii) were chopped for horses; acorns and other fruits such as wild apples or beechnuts were collected to fatten the pigs, although they might also be given to other animals (Pardo de Santayana 2008).

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Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Bolsterstone (2) W/G ·
• Bradfield, South Yorkshire (2) W/G ·
• Cantabrian Mountains (1) W/G ·
• Cheshire (5) W/G ·
• Common holly (Ilex aquifolium) (1), one of Britain's very few native evergreens W/G ·
• Derbyshire (11) W/G ·
• Evelyn, John (1620-1706) (2), writer, gardener and diarist W/G ·
• Fodder (2) W/G ·
• Gleadless (1), suburb of Sheffield containing Hollinsend W/G ·
• Guillim, John (ca. 1565-1621) (1), antiquarian and heraldist W/G ·
• Hallamshire (5) W/G ·
• Madrid (1) W/G ·
• Peak District (1) W/G ·
• Pennines (11) W/G ·
• Pryme, Abraham de la (1671-1704) (13), Yorkshire antiquary and curate born to Huguenots: a Dutch-speaking father from Ypres and a Parisian mother W/G ·
• Sheep (28) W/G ·
• 📌Sheffield (80) W/G ·
• Spain (9) W/G ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (150) W/G ·
• Western gorse (Ulex gallii) (1), evergreen shrub in the pea family common in the west of the country, substituted in eastern England by the closely related dwarf furze (Ulex minor) W/G ·
• Winter (11) W/G ·

All tags.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

John Guillim also tells us that “there is a kind of holly that is void of these prickles and of gentler nature, and therefore called free-holly, which in my opinion is the best holly” (Guillim 1660); John Evelyn that holly “is with us of two eminent kinds, the prickly, and smoother leaved, or as some term it, the free-holly, not unwelcome when tender, to sheep, and other cattle” (Evelyn 1670); and Pryme, a folklorist rather than a biologist, reports hearsay over observation. However, while leaves on young, and in the lower limbs of mature, trees have three to five sharp spines on each side, pointing alternately upward and downward, leaves of the upper branches in mature trees lack spines. The evolutionary reason is obvious: sheep, cattle and other potential predators can’t fly.

Jeffrey Radley:

Village names containing ‘hollin’ as a component are rare, but there is a Hollinsend, Sheffield, and Hollingworth, Cheshire. On the high moors trees grow best in the entrenched cloughs, and there are several indicative names such as Holling Dale on Bradfield Moors; Hollingworth Clough, Hayfield; and Hollins Clough, Dovedale. Near Bolsterstone, Yorkshire, there is Hollin Busk and Hollin Edge Height (Radley 1961).

I haven’t read Martin Spray’s article (Spray 1981).

In Campoo, on the southern slopes of the Cantabrian Range:

The basis of livestock feed was and continues to be pasture, meadow grass and agricultural produce (wheat, barley, potatoes, cabbage, alfalfa, carob, etc.), although it is now common to supplement this diet with feed and products brought from elsewhere. Family economics of just a few decades ago did not allow this type of luxury. Cattle, sheep, horses and even pigs grazed the countryside, although today only cattle and horses remain common. In the past, when food was scarce, it was necessary to resort to foraging wild resources. Branches of elm, holly or poplar were cut so that cattle, sheep and goats could take advantage of their leaves; weeds and other wild vegetables such as white asphodel, nettles, thistles (Sonchus asper) or field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) were used as a supplement for pigs, rabbits and chickens; heather and gorse (Ulex gallii) were chopped for horses; acorns and other fruits such as wild apples or beechnuts were collected to fatten the pigs, although they might also be given to other animals (Pardo de Santayana 2008).

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

David Clarke:

[T]he idea of Anglo-Saxon identity exerted a strong influence upon writers who collected folklore in Hallamshire, the geographical region that became the city of Sheffield in the modern county of South Yorkshire… [T]hat identity coalesced around two folk heroes, Earl Waltheof and Robin Hood (Robin of Loxley), who are portrayed in literature and folklore as ethnic Saxon rebels who fought against Norman occupation of the region. Both also came to symbolise the region’s independence of spirit and its rebelliousness. Today they are regarded as distinctly English national folk heroes, but their complex links with the folklore of southwest Yorkshire is less well known. During the nineteenth century, their legends became part of an imagined heritage based upon ideas of Anglo-Saxon indigeneity to Britain. As a result, folklore interacted with history to create a hybrid of fact, story and interpretation that persists to the present day… The rebel traditions of [southwest Yorkshire are] reflected in Victorian literature. Barczewski (2000, 132) notes that, ‘virtually every major fictional text written after 1820 features the conflict between Saxon and Norman as a prominent motif,’ and this division is projected backwards in accounts of the history and folklore of southwest Yorkshire. The most influential example is Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1820). His novel is set in the twelfth century, a generation after the Norman Conquest, and the narrative is located geographically in the valley of the River Don… Scott (1820; 2000, 15) says, ‘here flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English song.’ The plot of Ivanhoe is centred upon an imagined, ongoing struggle between dispossessed Saxons and their Norman lords that post-dated the Norman Conquest. Significantly, the outlaw Robin Hood – ‘Locksley’ – is both a central character and a figurehead for the freedom fighters.

(Clarke 2022)

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