COUNTRYWEAR clothing brand Glencroft is to launch a traceable ‘Farm to Yarn’ Dales wool collection in 2022 following a grant from the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s Sustainable Development Fund.

The Clapham-based firm was awarded £5,000 in grant funding which it hopes could pave the way for the production of more sustainable and entirely traceable wool yarn products.

As part of the Clapdale Wool Project, Glencroft will purchase wool fleeces from local farms within a five-mile radius of Glencroft’s Clapham home. The wool will then be scoured, processed and spun in a variety of local factories and mills in Yorkshire.

Glencroft owner Edward Sexton, has brought together a team of British wool and fashion design experts to create a Yorkshire equivalent using traditional and modern sheep breeds, including Dalesbred, Texel, Teeswater and Blue Faced Leicester.

He said: “By using breeds from the hills which surround us in Clapham, we will produce a wool that relates directly to the economy here. Not just the traditional rare breeds like the Dalebred, but a combination of the old and the new.

“This year we will use wool from two local Clapham farms - Dawsons of Bleak Bank and Whitakers of Bowsber Farm – both of whom farm their sheep in the fields around us,”

The unique high-end and highly sustainable Yorkshire-made yarn, which will be traceable from farm to end product, will be used to make a range of sustainable woollen knitwear, knitting yarn and tweed products, which will be sold online by Glencroft.

Glencroft has already received the first 100 kilograms of raw fleece which is ready for processing from the Dawson’s farm, and it is hoped that the yarn and knitwear collection will be available to buy in the first half of 2022.