June: The month of the Great Drift

For over 500 years, until the sale of the Royal Forest of Exmoor in 1818, June was the month of the Great Drift. At first light, nine days before midsummer, the Forest Warden and the fifty-two ‘Free Suitors’ gathered on horseback at Wiccombe Head near Bradymoor. For six to eight hours, they would systematically comb the 20,000 acres of the Forest, searching for sheep which had not been collected home for shearing by their owners. The sheep were driven to the Forest pound at Withypool and shorn.

By ancient tradition, the Warden could keep the fleeces of any stray sheep not belonging to the fifty-two Free Suitors. And he could keep any sheep unclaimed by Midsummer day. The fifty-two Free Suitors were owners or tenants of farms in Withypool and Hawkridge, who held rights dating back to the Norman Conquest to graze without charge a limited number of sheep, cattle, and horses within Exmoor Forest. In return, their duties included taking part in the Great Drift and seven other drives for cattle and horses during the year.

Hope Bourne (A Little History Of Exmoor, 1968) reports that during the 1730s, the sheep grazing in the Forest averaged 37,400. Enough to provide a nice income from unclaimed sheep and their fleeces for the Warden. Hope was intimately familiar with the “vast area to be covered, and all the innumerable combes and wild rough places to be drawn”, adding “there must have been good teamwork amongst these men of Withypool and Hawkridge, and hard riding to boot.”