Chillingham Estate
The Chillingham Estate is a broad estate of many hundreds of acres once attached to Chillingham Castle. It was separated at the end of the twentieth century and is now owned by a trust.
The estate is famous for the Chillingham White Cattle, a wild herd of unique oxen, roaming freely over the estate as feral beasts. They have been within the enclosed estate of Chillingham for 800 years. Guides can take visitors to see the wild cattle, but great care is needed.
The Chillingham White Cattle
The Wild Cattle of Chillingham are a feral herd of oxen found only here in their wild form. Their origin is unknown, but they are believed to be the only survivors of the wild herds which once roamed Britain’s forests.
The cattle are wild, undomesticated beasts, living and dying as ancient oxen once lived, untouched by the hand of man. They are far from the unfriendly cows of the farm: as wild animals they fight for the chance to mate and any weak herd members are gored to death. They naturally move in a herd and their behaviour has been closely studied to give an insight into natural animal behaviour.
The herd has remained remarkably genetically isolated for hundreds of years, and genetic tests have found the oxen across the herd genetically identical, for this reason.
The herd numbers around 100 beasts, making them far rarer than the Giant Panda, and all living in a beautiful enclosed park at Chillingham. There is also a small reserve herd of about 20 animals on Crown Estate land near Fochabers.
White Park Cattle, a breed more common in America, have been bred using Chillingham cattle, but there has been no contribution to the Chillingham herd from outside.
Ancestry
Earlier publicity material produced by the Chillingham Wild Cattle Association claims that Chillingham cattle bear some similarities to the extinct ancestral species Aurochs, Bos primigenius primigenius, based upon cranial geometrics and the positioning of their horns relative to the skull formation. They further claim that Chillingham cattle may be direct descendants of the primordial ox "which roamed these islands before the dawn of history";[1][2] moreover, according to Tankerville, these characteristics differed from the cattle brought into England by the Romans.
The alternative theory is that they are descended from mediæval husbanded cattle impounded when Chillingham Park was enclosed, but in the absence of adequate genetic or archaeological evidence, all these proposed origins must remain purely speculative.[3]
The traditional view remains that these cattle have an unbroken line of descent, without intervening domestication, from the wild-living aurochs and although this theory was already being called into question in the 1800s[4] and professional opinion is ranged against it, it is a very attractive concept and a romantic one.
Over the years a large popular literature has built up relating to the herd, which has been analyzed in relation to prevalent concepts of ownership and attitudes of people towards big, charismatic animals.[5] Simon Schama described the famous contemporary woodcut by Thomas Bewick [6] as "an image of massive power ... the great, perhaps the greatest icon of British natural history, and one loaded with moral, national and historical sentiment as well as purely zoological fascination".
The first written record of the herd dates from 1645 but the Chillingham herd is claimed by some to have been in this site for at least seven centuries. Before the 13th century, this breed is claimed to have "roamed the great forest which extended from the North Sea coast to the Clyde estuary" according to the Countess of Tankerville. During the 13th century, the King of England licensed Chillingham Castle to become "castellated and crenolated" and a drystone wall may well have been built then to enclose the herd. At that time, there was particular concern about reivers, which explains also the massive build-up of fortification of the nearby Dunstanburgh Castle at the same time.[7]
The wall that visitors see at Chillingham was built in the early 19th century to enclose the 1,500 acre of Chillingham Park. As of 2009, the cattle have 330 acres in which to roam and the rest of the ground is woodland or farmland.
Outside links
References
- ↑ Dowager Countess of Tankerville, patron, Chillingham Wild Cattle Association, The Wild White Cattle of Chillingham, Chillingham, Alnwick, England
- ↑ Dowager Countess of Tankerville. "The Wild White Cattle of Chillingham". White Park Cattle Society Ltd. Archived from the original on 8 February 2004. http://web.archive.org/web/20041208084049/http://www.whitepark.org.uk/chillingham.htm.
- ↑ "Bos primigenius in Britain: or, why do fairy cows have red ears?", http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_1_113/ai_86063329/pg_3, Jessica Hemming, April, 2002, accessed September 13, 2006
- ↑ Hall, SJG (2010) Caring for the legend of the wild bull: an interpretation of the Georgian landscape of Chillingham Park, Northumberland. Garden History 38,213-230.
- ↑ Ritvo,H (1992) Race, breed and myths of origin: Chillingham cattle as ancient Britons. Representations 39,1-22.
- ↑ Schama, S. (2002) A history of Britain. The fate of empire 1776-2000. London: BBC Worldwide, p.126)
- ↑ C. M. Hogan, History and architecture of Dunstanburgh Castle, Lumina Technologies, Aberdeen, Scotland, July, 2006
