The wool in a Sheep Shed collar passes through five sets of hands before it reaches mine. A farm, the British Wool grading floor, the auction in Bradford, a spinner in Huddersfield, and Kate Drury at Sustainable Rope, who lays it into rope in West Yorkshire. I do the sixth part, which is the weaving, in Oxford. Every one of those jobs is done by fewer people than it was ten years ago.
I get asked where the wool comes from, and the honest answer takes longer than most people expect. It is not one farm and a romantic photograph. It is a chain of specialists, most of them working in a trade that has spent twenty years being told it is finished. This is that chain, stage by stage, with the numbers attached.
The farm, and what a fleece is worth
Britain has about 34 million sheep and more sheep breeds than any other country on earth, over 60 of them, of which around 25 are classed as rare. That variety is the reason British wool is interesting and also the reason it is hard to sell. Buyers want consistency. A country with 60 breeds does not offer consistency, it offers character.
The economics have been brutal. Farmers were paid about 40p a kilo for the 2024 clip and 68p for 2025. For 2026 the figure is around £1 a kilo, the strongest it has been in a decade, and I would not want to overstate what that means. Shearing costs roughly £1.93 a head. A fleece brings somewhere between £2.50 and £4. So a good year is one where the wool covers the shearing and leaves a little over. Nobody is farming sheep for the wool. They are farming sheep and dealing with the wool, because the animal has to be shorn either way for its own welfare.
I drove to Wales to meet Rhodri and Sarah, who farm Welsh Mountain sheep near Bont-goch. I left Oxford at five in the morning thinking it was a quick detour and ended up in something closer to a survival documentary filmed inside a Renault Kangoo. Directions like follow the road to the left of the white windmill, turn left at the yellow house, continue after the bull in the field sign. No phone signal, two river crossings, wet trousers, and a two hour tour of every farm lane in the valley because I had missed an obvious turning fifteen minutes in. Later that day I watched Rhodri work a flock with one dog and one whistle, and the whole flock moved exactly where he wanted it. That is the part of this chain that no spreadsheet captures.
Grading, which is still done by eye and hand
Once the clip leaves the farm it goes to British Wool, who grade it. This is the stage almost nobody knows about. British Wool hand grades the national clip into roughly 120 separate grades, organised into six style families: Fine, Medium, Cross, Lustre, Hill and Mountain. A person picks up a fleece, opens it, looks at the staple, feels it, and calls a grade. There is no machine doing this.
The trade has its own vocabulary too. A hog is the wool from a sheep's first shear, and it is the best fleece the animal will ever produce, longer and cleaner. A ewe is every shear after that. If you have ever wondered why two collars in the same colourway can have slightly different handle, that is why. It is a natural product graded by a human being.
Graded wool is then sold at auction in Bradford, which has been the centre of the British wool trade for a very long time and is now a much quieter place than it was.
The stages, and what each one contributes
| Stage | Where | Who does it | Verdict on the state of it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shearing | Hill and upland farms | Farmers and contract shearers | Barely breaks even at £1.93 a head. Done for welfare, not profit |
| Grading | British Wool depots | Hand graders, by eye and touch | Around 120 grades across six style families. Skilled and irreplaceable |
| Auction | Bradford | British Wool on behalf of members | Still functioning, on a fraction of its historic volume |
| Scouring | Yorkshire | A handful of remaining scourers | The weak link. You can count them on one hand |
| Spinning | Huddersfield | A working mill on generational knowledge | Understands this clip in a way volume processors do not |
| Rope making | West Yorkshire | Kate Drury, Sustainable Rope | The reason this range exists. Rare skill, rarer commitment |
| Weaving and splicing | Oxford | Me, at one bench | The smallest contribution in the chain and the only one you see |
Who is left doing these jobs
This is the part that should worry people more than it does. Britain shears 34 million sheep and processes a small fraction of that clip at home. Estimates put domestic processing at under 10 percent of the national wool crop. The rest is shipped abroad, largely to be scoured and spun somewhere with lower costs, and then sold back to us inside finished goods.
Scouring is the bottleneck. It is the wet, dirty, capital heavy stage that turns greasy fleece into usable fibre, and the number of operators left in this country is small enough that you can count them on one hand. Spinning is in better shape but not by much. Rope laying in wool, as opposed to synthetic, is close to a one person trade. When a link in a chain like that goes, it does not come back, because the equipment gets scrapped and the knowledge retires with the person holding it.
That is the reason I buy finished rope rather than fleece. I am not equipped to scour, spin or lay rope, and pretending otherwise would be nonsense. What I can do is buy from the people who still can, consistently, and put their work in front of customers with their names attached.
Kate Drury and Sustainable Rope
Kate is a fourth generation sheep farmer and a British Wool board member, and she founded Sustainable Rope to make rope from 100 percent British wool with no plastic in it. Everything they make travels within a sixty mile radius of their West Yorkshire workshop, and some of it moves less than twenty miles. That kind of locality is close to extinct in textiles.
Her rope is fully traceable back to the farms through British Wool. Sustainable Rope were joint winners of the Innovation in Wool Awards in 2022 and took a Women in Innovation Award in 2023, and have appeared on BBC Countryfile. The same rope specification is made for seaweed farming and has been tested submerged in seawater over 90, 180 and 270 days, which tells you something about how seriously it is engineered.
I have still not met her in person. It has been emails, WhatsApp messages and orders, which is how modern life works. You can tell a great deal about someone from how they talk about their own work.
What arrives in Oxford, and what happens then
The finished rope and braid arrives at 70 Wolsey Road and it becomes the range. The 14mm rope becomes the Brampton wool lead and the Swaledale wool lead, hand spliced at both ends. The 4mm braid gets woven around straps to become the Brampton Classic and the Dingley Classic. Offcuts become the Brampton keyring tassel and the Swaledale keyring tassel rather than going in a bin. The collars sit in Sheep Shed collars, the leads in Sheep Shed leads, and the whole thing in the Sheep Shed collection.
The same logic runs through the Cotton Mill collection, which is the cotton equivalent, and through the rest of the designer collars and leads. Buy a named material from a named maker, tell people who made it, and do not dress it up.
I talked about most of this on BBC Radio Oxford on 4 August 2026, and the thing that surprised the presenter was not the collars. It was that a fleece is worth less than a pint and that the grading is still done by hand. Those two facts sit at either end of the same chain.
Frequently asked questions
How much are British farmers actually paid for wool?
Around £1 a kilo for the 2026 clip, which is the strongest price in a decade. It was 68p in 2025 and 40p in 2024. Set against that, shearing costs roughly £1.93 a head and a fleece brings between £2.50 and £4. A good year is one where the wool covers the cost of shearing. Sheep are shorn for welfare reasons regardless of what the wool is worth.
How is British wool graded before it is sold?
British Wool hand grades the national clip into roughly 120 separate grades across six style families: Fine, Medium, Cross, Lustre, Hill and Mountain. A grader opens each fleece, examines the staple and assigns a grade by eye and touch. There is no machine doing this. The graded wool is then sold at auction in Bradford.
What is the difference between hog wool and ewe wool?
Hog is the wool from a sheep's first shear and it is the finest fleece that animal will ever produce, longer in the staple and cleaner. Ewe wool is every shear after the first. It is one of the reasons two pieces made from the same wool style can feel slightly different in the hand. Wool is a natural product graded by people, not a manufactured one.
Where is the wool in a Green Dog collar spun and made into rope?
The wool is graded by British Wool and sold at auction in Bradford, then spun at a mill in Huddersfield. It is laid into rope by Kate Drury at Sustainable Rope in West Yorkshire, where everything travels within a sixty mile radius of the workshop and some materials move less than twenty miles. It is then woven and spliced by hand in Oxford.
How much British wool is processed in Britain?
Under 10 percent of the national clip by most estimates, despite the UK carrying about 34 million sheep. The rest is shipped abroad to be scoured and spun, then often sold back into the country inside finished goods. Scouring is the bottleneck. The number of operators left in Britain is small enough that you can count them on one hand.
Why does Green Dog buy finished rope instead of raw fleece?
Because scouring, spinning and rope laying are three separate specialist trades and a one person studio in Oxford cannot do any of them. Buying finished British wool rope from Sustainable Rope puts the work in the hands of people who still hold those skills. The studio's contribution is the weaving, splicing and finishing, which is the smallest part of the chain and the only visible one.
British wool, graded in Bradford, spun in Huddersfield, roped in West Yorkshire, woven in Oxford. Made to order in two to six working days.
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