Theakston Brewery company acquired and closed down the Lightfoot Brewery, also in Masham. Theakston's expanded into Cumbria in 1974 buying the Carlisle State Management Brewery. The brewery had been owned and operated by the government since 1916. However, the site was a financial drain on Theakston's and led to the company being taken over in 1984 by Blackburn based brewer, Matthew Brown plc. Matthew Brown was itself taken over by Scottish & Newcastle in 1987. Paul Theakston (Managing Director since 1968) left Theakston's in 1988, and in 1992 established the Black Sheep Brewery in the old Lightfoot Brewery premises - located adjacent
Black Sheep (anarcho-folk band) Black Sheep (anarcho-folk band) Black Sheep are an English anarcho-folk band formed by singer/songwriter and counter-cultural activist Julian Cope. They are the most recent of Cope's ongoing side projects, which include Brain Donor and Queen Elizabeth. The origins of Black Sheep lie in Julian Cope’s 2008 solo album "Black Sheep", for which he assembled a varied group of contributing musicians both from his longstanding talent pool and from more recent associates. "Black Sheep" was a predominantly acoustic project, dominated by Cope’s vocals and Mellotron playing and by varied contributions mainly played on acoustic guitars and large bass drums. Besides Cope