The Lincolnshire Buff was created in the mid 19th century as a dual purpose utility breed found mainly in it’s native Lincolnshire. During the 19th and early 20th Century, it was supplied in vast numbers to the London markets as a white fleshed table bird and was widely sold as a good winter layer. Standardisation of the Buff Orpington, which many at the time considered to be a refined Lincolnshire Buff, lead to it’s demise by the 1920’s, although it’s genetic material lived on in the Orpington albeit in a much modified form.

In the 1980’s the breed was re-developed in Lincolnshire using this genetic material, with the addition of the Cochin and Dorking. This in turn produced an ideal fowl for the modern smallholder.