Over the 2008/9 winter, the farm team constructed a traditional fold yard for lambing sheep as a working exhibit for visitors to demonstrate traditional lambing practices; a once common, but now vanished feature of the Chilterns landscape.

The fold yard is constructed with wattle and gate hurdles with 5 roughly thatched shelters for the ewes and their lambs, flanked by the 2008 hay rick built and thatched by the farm team. as well as a straw bale stack for strawing the ground. The shepherds living van has now been relocated to the fold to show the shepherd's lifestyle at this time. The Museum lambing team made good use of this accommodation during the April/May 2009 lambing season. The fold was designed traditionally to be moved each year to new ground and in the future the Museum will adopt this practice after using the present fold once again in 2010.

Contemporary Description of Lambing Fold:

"...a temporary lambing yard built with straw and hurdles is universally adopted. Around the inside of the enclosure small coops or compartments are hurdled off. The shepherd will remain night and day with his flock during this time, and a hut will be provided for him with stove and firing. The shepherd brings all forward ewes into the lambing yard at night. As soon as a lamb is born, it and its dam will be removed into one of the coops, and there remain for three to four days until the lamb is able to follow its mother without difficulty and until they know each other thoroughly. In the lambing yard the ewes receive some cake and corn, with roots and hay. After two or three days in the coops the ewes and lambs will be transferred into one of the bigger yards of the lambing pen, and from thence out into the open fold at from four to seven days old, depending on the weather and the strength of the lamb..."