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
Baa, Baa, Black Sheep Baa, Baa, Black Sheep "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" is an English nursery rhyme, the earliest surviving version of which dates from 1731. The words have not changed very much in two-and-a-half centuries. It is sung to a variant of the 1761 French melody "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman". Uncorroborated theories have advanced to explain the meaning of the rhyme. These include it is a complaint against taxes levied on the Medieval English wool trade and it is about the slave trade. In the twentieth century it was a subject of controversies in debates about political correctness. It has been used in