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 Astray status quo. In a flashback of his last conversation with Isobel, we learn that Crawford does not believe he will survive the revolution this time around. As with "Black Man's Burden", "Border, Breed nor Birth", and "The Best Ye Breed", the title "Black Sheep Astray" plays on a Rudyard Kipling poem; in this case, as the story's epigraph ("We're little black sheep/Who've gone astray,/ Baa-aa-aa!") indicates, on the refrain of "Gentlemen Rankers." A gentleman ranker is person of privilege who, despite his education, serves as an enlisted man, usually because he has disgraced himself or transgressed his society's mores, and