Do you measure up in the size stakes?

I remember a witness in court trying to convince the magistrates of the size of a stone someone had thrown through his window.

When asked if it was a large or small stone, he said it was “about middling” and when pressed to be more precise, he said, “It was about t’size of a lump o’ mud.” I think he was visualising the mud which dropped from his tractor tyres after leaving a field.

Measuring the area of land has always been problematic. We like to say it’s about the size of a tennis court, or twice the size of the pitch at Wembley or even half the size of Wales. Measuring things by comparing them with others has long been practised and we still refer to a cottage as being twice the size of two double-decker London buses parked side-by-side or a tower block of flats matches the height of Nelson’s Column.

Things weren’t improved when the European Economic Community (EEC) passed a directive in 1972 that catalogued units of measure that might be used within the European community, one of which was the hectare. It did not enforce the use of hectares but said, in simple terms, it was OK to make use of it when describing areas of land. A hectare is about the size of an international rugby union football field and for those of us who need to be more precise, it is the equivalent of 2.47105381 acres. In other words, a hectare is a unit of metric measure of 10,000 square metres while an acre is just under half the area of a hectare.

Our ancestors as far back as Anglo-Saxon times had problems measuring the area of their land and they reached a solution that claimed a unit of measure could be described as that which could be ploughed by a team of eight oxen on one year. This became known as the plough or ploughland although this measure appeared to include the meadows and pasturelands of the homestead.

The tenant of every ploughland paid plough-alms of one penny to the church although the frequency of this payment is unknown. The payment of this money then gave the tenant certain rights known as plough-bote. This allowed him to remove timber from the woodlands to make or repair his implements used in husbandry. There was also a hay-bote that allowed him to take timber to repair fences, and a house-bote which permitted wood to be taken for repairs to the house along with firebote which allowed the collection of firewood. Collectively, these rights were known as estovers.

In some areas that same area of land was known as the hide and although its precise area is uncertain, it is generally thought to be around 120 modern acres.

Another name for that same area appeared in the Domesday Book which referred to it as either a carracute or caracuta but this could be smaller than 120 acres, even merely half that area but it was regarded as the size of land that could be ploughed within one year. In Kent, a carracute was sometimes known as a sulung which was divided into four yokes, with each yoke then being divided into four virgates.

However, the term virgate appeared in other parts of the country although its area varied between 15 and 30 acres. In some places it was a verge or even a yard-land. The precise measurement varied from place to place but was usually in the region of 20 acres. When the yard-land was divided into quarters, each was known as a fardel, with some authorities arguing that two fardels made a nook.

The sheer vagueness of these ancient terms is further highlighted because there was another word for the area that could be ploughed by a single ox in just one year. That word was oxgang, sometimes referred to as osken or oxgate. It was an area of between 12 and 15 acres but was fictitious because one ox never ploughed alone. They worked in teams, often as many as eight but sometimes as few as two. Logically, therefore, the area that might be ploughed by one ox was an eighth of that ploughed by the whole team.

Four oxgangs together worked out at around 12 to 15 acres and were known as librata terrae. In the time of King Henry III, the owner of 15 librata terrae was liable to be granted a knighthood but this was usually something he did not want because knights had to pay heavy expenses in connection with their dignity.

There were also names for smaller units of land. A fall was six ells square or the 160th part of an acre but because acres varied in size from place to place, so did the size of a fall. Another obscure term was farthing of land which appears to have been a large area, although there were farthingdeals and farundels which were quarter of an acre, i.e. one rood or thereabouts.

This name should not be confused with farthingland which in Sussex meant the succession of land ownership went to the youngest son, and not the eldest.

In default, it went to the youngest daughter.

The different in measurements throughout the country led to an attempt in 1305 to impose a legal requirement. This was known as Statutum de Admensuratione Terre. This law said that an acre contained 160 square perches, a perch being 5.5 yards. The standard English acre had to contain four roods, each rood containing 40 poles or perches, and each pole containing 272.5 square feet, thus making an acre of 4,840 square yards. This measurement was later confirmed by the Measures Act of 1878.

This new law appears not to have catered for the Welsh acre (9,680 square yards) which itself had variations such as the erw (4,320 square yards) and the stang (3,240 square yards. Then there is the Scottish acre of 6,150.4 square yards and an Irish one of 7,840 square yards. And even some of our counties have their own acres… I am not surprised, therefore, to find estate agents advertising properties with plenty of land, or a good sized garden or perhaps with extensive lawns. THE next three days, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, were long known as the Borrowing Days because it was believed that March borrowed those days from April, and they were always bad days from a weather point of view.

The old saying was “March borrows three days of April, and they are ill.”

There is a more comprehensive verse in a Yorkshire dialect which goes: March borrowed frev April Three days and they were ill; T’fost on ‘em was wind and weet, T’second was nowt but snow and sleet, And t’thod was sike an awful freeze, That t’poor bods’ legs was stuck ti t’trees.