sheep creep

plural sheep creeps

1. A small, low opening built into the base of a drystone wall or farm boundary; it allows sheep and lambs to pass freely between fields while blocking larger livestock like cows.

   The animal population of the West Highlands had to receive special consideration. No few than 200 creeps were built, ranging from simple wooden sheep-creeps 4 ft wide, to plate girder cattle-creeps

   1914, John Thomas, The West Highland Railway

   5 more examples

   Hares are also snared and trapped. I used to know an old man in whose blood the poaching instinct ran so strongly that, though reduced almost to ineptitude by age and infirmity, he would persist in trying to trap hares in “sheep creeps” (holes in stone walls to let sheep through from one field to another) and watercourse holes.

   1895, Cassell and Company, “THE POACHER AND HIS CRAFT”, in Cassell’s Family Magazine Vol. 21 1895, page 804

   I knew a cunning old gamekeeper in Yorkshire who used to frustrate the efforts of people who practised this kind of poaching by what he called "mistetching" the Hares on his beat every autumn. He netted as many of them as he could himself, and then turned them loose again. The consequence was that a Hare that had once struggled within the meshes of a net would rarely go through a gateway or sheep-creep (a hole in a stone wall to let sheep through from one field to another_ unless absolutely forced to do so by an exceedingly swift dog. I have seen a Hare which this man had had in a net leap a stone fence quite dix feet high.

   1898, Richard Keaton, “Frustrating the Poachers”, in With nature and a camera; being the adventures and observations of a field naturalist and an animal photographer, page 175

   With a mixture of short texts and pen and ink illustrations, it tells about historical features, houses where the famous lived, country crafts including how to make stone walls without mortar, and where to see wild animals and flowers, and descriptions of unusual items like a sheep creep or a bee hole. The book is intended to make a child look, find out, and record with drawings, words, and postcards.

   1971, Betty Jerman, “About the Family”, in The Guardian , 1971, UK, English, page 9

   Separate feeding of lambs apart from the adult sheep can be arranged by making an enclosure of special hurdles which have holes in them just large enough to let lambs through, but not sheep. These holes are called lamb, or sheep-creeps. They can be adjusted to the size of the lambs and have wooden rollers on the top and sides to let animals through easily. In this way feeding can be rationed, giving the lambs the best grazing land a day ahead of the sheep.

   1973, Heather Angel, AA Book of the British Countryside, page 413

   Post-medieval use of upland moors for grazing has produced its own distinctive archaeology, including sheep folds, pens, shelters, sheep creeps through walls on semi-enclosed moorland, and shielings and summer residences for seasonal use.

   1987, Darvill, Timothy, Ancient monuments in the countryside, page 155

   Synonyms: cattle creep, cripple hole, smoot hole, smoot