Shepherd Check (Universal)
This is one variant — a specific cloth: this exact thread count and colourway, with its own provenance below. It is one weaving of the sett (the scale-free proportion — the same cloth at any scale or shade), whose colour order is pattern KW.
Sourced from tartans-authority. It is a 2 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=1253
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 260 AD — Shepherd Check (Universal) (tartans-authority, record)
This is an old traditional border shepherd's check made of white wool and black wool, and which was later introduced to the Highlands and formed the basis of many of the estate checks. Also known as the The Falkirk Tartan because of the discovery of such a weave in the neck of a jar containing Roman coins buried about 260 A.D. The black and white check is woven today as a family tartan for the surname Shepherd tartan. Notes from www.regiments.orf add: "The "Northumberland" tartan, also known as "Border", "Border Riever", and "Shepherd's Check" predates most Scottish tartans and has long been associated with shepherds of the Border region who were encouraged to move north after the Highland clearances. As early as 1760 the Duke of Northumberland (Percy family) designated this tartan for his personal piper. It was later adopted as the plaid for pipers of The Northumberland Fusiliers, the official tartan of Northumberland County and that of the Shepherd family. Seems only to be woven at this time (Aug 2005) by the Northumberland Tartan Co. - www.northumberlandtartan.co.uk Tel: 01830 540 435 . - 260 AD — Northumberland (District) (tartans-authority, record)
This is an old traditional border shepherd's check made of white wool and black wool, and which was later introduced to the Highlands and formed the basis of many of the estate checks. Also known as the The Falkirk Tartan because of the discovery of such a weave in the neck of a jar containing Roman coins buried about 260 A.D. The black and white check is woven today as a family tartan for the surname Shepherd. Notes from www.regiments.org add: "The "Northumberland" tartan, also known as "Border", "Border Reiver", and "Shepherd's Check" predates most Scottish tartans and has long been associated with shepherds of the Border region who were encouraged to move north after the Highland clearances. As early as 1760 the Duke of Northumberland (Percy family) designated this tartan for his personal piper. It was later adopted as the plaid for pipers of The Northumberland Fusiliers, the official tartan of Northumberland County and that of the Shepherd family. Seems only to be woven at this time (Aug 2005) by the Northumberland Tartan Co. - www.northumberlandtartan.co.uk Tel: 01830 540 435.
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Tartans Authority
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/tartans-authority/data.csv
- data date
- 260 AD (this record)
- licence
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Capture chain — the hands this data passed through, oldest first; each capture carries its own licence
- Scottish Tartans Authority
the heritage body's archive — its tartan-ferret record browser is retired (links repaired to the SRT, above) - thetartan/tartan-database 2016-2017 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Levko Kravets's frozen compilation — the capture we vendored, and where its CC licence text came from - this dictionary captured 2026-06-10 · commit 5bf86c7566
each re-capture is a git commit to data/sources
Register references
External register numbers recorded for this tartan.
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 6765
Thread count
K/6 W/6
One full sett is 12 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| W | #F7F7F7 #F7F7F7 | oklch(97.6% 0.000 89.9) |
Sample pattern
Nearest tartan variants
The nearest existing variants by ΔTartan distance, with this cloth at the top so the swatches line up against it.
Neighbour map
Every grey dot is one of 13621 variants placed by the first two principal components of the ΔTartan feature space (42% of its variance). Red is this tartan; blue dots are its nearest — click one to open its page.
ID: /variants/s2/k1w1~x6/