Robert Bakewell of Dishley Grange (1725-1795).
Robert Bakewell was the fourth generation of a family of Leicestershire tenant farmers in Normanton-le-Heath. Originally husbandmen, they developed specialist skills in breeding animals. As they succeeded, they bought grazing land while keeping their rented farms. They became members of the Loughborough Unitarian Chapel in Warners Lane. This excluded them from much social life then, but the Unitarians had a close network in Leicestershire and the surrounding counties. Robert’s father, also Robert, moved to Dishley Grange in about 1709, as a tenant of the Phillipps family of Garendon Park, Loughborough. The old house was still partly medieval; the present Dishley Grange is a mid-19thcentury rebuild. Robert senior sent his son on educational tours both in this country and abroad before he took over the farm from his father in about 1760. Young Robert set about modernising the farm, putting up new buildings for his new methods and repurposing old ones such as the medieval Great Barn, where he housed his sheep. He dug a canal system through the farm so he could water the pastures, and used it to float turnips down into the farmyard already washed. He grew willows, coppiced to provide fences, gates and tools. As there was no local inn, his sister Hannah accommodated their visitors in the farmhouse – anyone from the Culley brothers from Northumberland to European nobility and Russian pupils sent by Catherine the Great. His staff were loyal and long-serving.
Bakewell’s reputation as the foremost agriculturalist of his day derives mainly from his work developing animal breeding. He would not allow any cruelty to his animals, nor the use of whips. He created the New Leicester or Dishley sheep, primarily for meat to feed the population of the expanding industrial towns. The wool, long with natural lustre, was used by the Leicestershire framework knitters. The breed is still popular all over the world through its crossbreeds.
His cattle were Midland Longhorns, excellent dual-purpose animals with docile temperaments. He refined them for greater production of roasting joints to suit the market. He improved the local Midlands black cart horse, introducing Flemish blood to produce a fine heavy horse, the forerunner of the modern Shire.
King George III, known as Farmer George because of his interest in agriculture, commanded Bakewell to take one of these horses to St James’s Palace for his inspection. Horses for the army, private carriages and coaches were needed; he bred and supplied appropriate ones. He developed a breed of Dishley pig which has not survived; nor have his experimental chickens. He fixed the characteristics he sought by breeding in-and-in (mating within a family), condemned by the Church as incest. Before Darwin or Mendel, he understood how species changed. His animals were exported widely and further developed, including Ireland, Northumberland and the Borders. His sheep went to the United States, where George Washington modelled his farm at Mount Vernon on Bakewell’s work and Bakewell supplied equipment for him. Both cattle and sheep also went to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and South America.
23 May 2025 is the tercentenary of his birth at Dishley Grange. This local man is known and still admired around the world, and local events to mark the date are being planned. Robert Bakewell and his animals will be the main theme of Rutland Show on June 1st, 2025. Local events are planned including a tercentenary lecture at Loughborough University, given by John Thorley OBE, FRAgS. The New Dishley Society is publishing a major new book on his life and work. If any of your members would like more information on the events or purchase details for the book, please email ndssecretary@gmail.com . If your Society is planning any events, please do let me know.
Janet Spavold, Secretary, The New Dishley Society.
