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In the British Isles (and other regions of the world) drywall pens were built for sheep. In England they were called sheepfolds.

What the the advantages of this format over others in common use at the time?

For example as a shelter in a pasture to use for inclement weather? Or a convenient place to put all the sheeps while shearing? I don't know a lot about modern or historical livestock management to get more specific so I like to get an understanding of how they were used in medieval times.

ANSWER Thanks to Red Sonja, I did a search and found numerous allusion to the historical use of a sheepfold as a means of protecting a herd of sheep during the night from thieves and animals. Something that not stated in Wikipedia or various dictionaries. Or that you get by typing in just sheep fold back in 2014.

This is the clearest article I found.

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  • This is a trivial question. Answer found in wikipedia
    – MCW ♦
    Commented Sep 19, 2014 at 17:10
  • @MarkC.Wallace all the wikipedia article tells me is that it is a holding pen for livestock. It doesn't tell what holding pens were used for as part of managing livestock. There are lot of reasons that you need to pen up animals. That part isn't clear.
    – RS Conley
    Commented Sep 19, 2014 at 18:16
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    Ahh - then I would respectfully suggest that those questions are not historical in nature, but agricultural. Based on my limited knowledge, there are multiple reasons to confine livestock (quarantine, feeding, breeding, shearing, killing, etc.); generally any task that is easier if you don't have to start by catching the livestock. I suspect the uses of a sheepfold are manifold.
    – MCW ♦
    Commented Sep 19, 2014 at 18:28
  • @MarkC.Wallace I don't care about the use of pens modern agriculture but rather how it was used in the middle ages, hence it is a historical question.
    – RS Conley
    Commented Sep 19, 2014 at 19:59
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    @RSConley: You should edit the question to link to the Wikipedia article so people know that you have gotten "that far." My other changes regarded the historical "functionality" of the sheepfold.
    – Tom Au
    Commented Sep 20, 2014 at 22:46

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