Shipston's Anglo Saxon settlement name was Scepwestun or in modern English Sheep-wash-town. It has long been a river crossing on the droving roads that linked the Iron Age hill settlements on the Ilmington downs and Mad Marston Hill at Swalcliffe. The Romans were well established here too with their now quite deserted town at Lower Lea, again by Swalcliffe. Sheep have long been the favoured animal for upland areas such as the nearby Cotswolds and North Oxfordshire uplands, so it is not surprising that by Anglo Saxon times the practice of sheep washing here was sufficient to name it so.

The river Stour at Shipston is well sized for sheep washing as it is small enough to easily construct and control a well sized washing area, and yet large enough for a good flow. The animals would be diverted off the droving road into hurdled pens and then pushed down the steepened river bank into the pre-dredged deep water. Hurdles would be placed across the river to stop the animals escaping upstream or downstream. The sheep then exit the river in shallows on the opposite bank where they are driven into further hurdled pens for drying. When dry the animals would be sheared, their fleeces rolled and then sold.    

The site for the sheep wash at Shipston would have been almost certainly next to the bridge on the mill side. That is between the bridge and the mill. The steepened bank for their thorough submersion would have been on the Brailes side of the river and the exit shallows would have been on the town side. The drying areas were probably sited on land that is now the mill car park. The town side would have been the preferred side for drying the sheep. Standing in their pens drying off, sometimes for a quite a long time, they were vulnerable to theft and had to be well guarded.

In 1280 the first bridge was constructed and the modern town began to emerge. At this time the arches of the bridge were probably utilized to create a temporary sluice so that a body of deeper water was held back for the early summer wash. This much reduced the need for annual dredging. This period was also the beginning of the golden age for sheep in this region. Wool was now being exported to the Low Countries to supply their cloth trade. Huge fortunes were made by English wool merchants and the market here in Shipston must have benefited from the close proximity of the wool town of Chipping Campden one of the wealthiest towns in the land. Although the Black Death reduced the human population by a third, the sheep went from strength to strength. The resulting demise, through neglect, of arable strip farming made more land available for sheep. Unscrupulous landlords cleared village settlements to cash in on wool. The medieval wealth from sheep can still be seen today in many nearby churches on which the local yeoman's wealth was often spent for enlargement and decoration. Tysoe, Brailes and Burton Dassett are fine South Warwickshire examples.

As far as I am aware there are no records as to when Shipston lost the sheep wash. The 18th century agricultural revolution introduced new management methods. Farmsteads were re-modeled and shepherds took to constructing their own farm based washes. In some places though river washes were still used into the late 19^th century. The industrial revolution produced machines to clean the wool after it was shorn. It is generally assumed that once hand spinning stopped so did the practice of sheep washing. Sadly today, in 2008, wool is worth virtually nothing. Even more sadly there is also nothing to be seen of the thousand year old namesake, the sheep wash.