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 Brewery of our success". Nevertheless, a growing share of its sales is in on-cask form. All bottled beers brewed by the Black Sheep Brewery are suitable for both vegetarians and vegans. According to the website, "...Riggwelter takes its name from the local Yorkshire Dales dialect – when a sheep is on its back and can’t get up without help, local dialect says it is riggwelted. This dialect word comes from the old Viking words: ‘rigg’(rygg) meaning back and ‘velte’ to overturn (the words and their meaning are still largely the same in the modern North Germanic languages). Riggwelter is also popular