Patrick Flannery Walker - Lakeland Chronicles
This is an ongoing project involving the tumbling hills of the Lake District. The work is a chronicle of the people I meet and their traditional working lives, including shepherding, farming, stonewall building and slate mining. The project details individual stages of the annual sheep cycle of scanning (February), lambing (April) and shearing (July), interspersed with the shepherds’ daily battles to protect their livestock from the weather.
The livelihood of the inhabitants here is treacherously balanced. The landscape is steeped in sublime beauty; but the volatile weather alterations and their arsenal of snow, wind and rain has damaging effects on the landscape and its inhabitants. The increased rainfall seen over the last few years has caused mass flooding in towns and in the surrounding farmland, which the shepherds’ have struggled to cope with.
To add to the strain inflicted by the weather, fleeces are less sought after and valuable, and lamb prices have dropped dramatically in recent years. These financial pressures, along with changes in taste and growing concern about ethical and environmental issues, mean the tradition is under threat.
In this time of change, some parts of this ancestral way of life are hanging in the balance. But for now, through rain and snow, the workers still maintain and cherish their practice.