The Lincolnshire Curly Coated Pig

Lincolnshire Curly Coated Sow belonging to Henry Caudwell of Midville, Boston

In the early 20^th Century the Large White pig had become dominant in Lincolnshire as the rest of the country. Pig breed origins are always obscure with it taking some time before a breed is recognised in its own right. One of the first notable appearances of the Large White as distinct breed was at the Windsor Royal Show of 1851 where it was described as the “Large White” or “Improved Yorkshire” giving a clear indication of its origins. By 1900 the Large White and its bloodline became one of  the most exported pig species. However, its bloodline appears to owe some of its origins to imported Chinese pigs. In 1685 the East India Company imported live pigs from China and thus started a cross-breeding process that used these pigs to reduce the size and increase the speed of growth of many British and European breeds. Such changes helped feed the increased population and labour of the Industrial Revolution. Bucking this trend in the Lincolnshire fens were the large Lincolnshire Curly-Coated Pigs.

The Lincolnshire Curly-Coated Pigs could be found in the fens and marshes in herds of 100 or over running in the open on fen and marsh. As such they were ideal for turning newly reclaimed fenland. These pigs were strong with large frames. The continued breeding of them was perhaps driven by a local demand for fat pork as it was a custom to allow labourers a measure of pork in lieu of wages. However, as we approached the 1914-18 War this demand and therefore the breed was decreasing rapidly. Sales of curly coats in markets in 1914 fetched low prices, a trend that barely recovered, but breeding continued in the fens and marshes around Boston. In 1916 Edward Dodds of Glebe farm, Stickney killed a curly coat pig with a live weight of 54 stones and a dead weight of 45 stones 10lbs – a phenomenal weight for a pig that was two days under a year of age, compared to the typical weight at that age of 30 stones for that breed.   The curly coat provided fat pork with slow growth, the demand, focused by War was for bacon and faster growing pigs so the curly coat was increasingly interbred and/or replaced by Large Whites. By 1936 the local press in Lincolnshire speculated as to whether the species would die out and the last curly coat died about 1970.

It is interesting that whereby you can find descriptions matching the curly coat in the seventeenth century it only became a registered breed in 1906 with the Lincolnshire Curly Coat Pig Breed Society formed in Boston in that year with the first herd book  issued in 1907.

In 1998 Hungarian Mangalitza pigs were brought to the UK and were billed as a reintroduction of the Lincolnshire curly-coat. This is misleading. Popular media claimed the Hungarian Mangalitza was the result of exporting pigs from Lincolnshire. In my opinion this is more likely to be the other way around. You see reports of Hungarian pigs being sold at markets in Leeds  and London as early as the 1820’s and causing a stir because of their curly woolly coats. In 1849 you saw refugees from the Hungarian uprising against Austria arrive in Britain with many more going to America. By 1869 we see regular sales of Hungarian pigs at markets in Leeds, London and Newcastle. It seems highly likely that Hungarian migration had increased their numbers in Britain and that these were cross bred with Yorkshire Pigs or Large Whites to produce the Lincolnshire Curly Coat. It has to be noted in Yorkshire a curly coat was regarded as a “very objectional feature”.

Finally I leave you with this description of the Lincolnshire curly coat pig from the Farmers Gazette of February 1898 the tone of which perhaps indicates how it was regarded and why it is seen no more:

“……a character very common in the Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire fens – the big, gaunt, white or blue and white, curly coated coarse bone and fleshed monster. Such uncouth pigs might have filled a want when size and toughness of meat were desired from a pig which had for two or three years fulfilled its destiny consuming an enormous amount of coarse food before offering its shrill protest against the application of the butcher’s knife to its throat.”