'Yardland' redirects here. Not to be confused withyard (land). For the use of 'virgate' in reference to rod-like stems and ribs, seevirgate (botany).
Farm-derived units of measurement:
Therod is a historical unit of length equal to5+1⁄2 yards. It may have originated from the typical length of a mediaevalox-goad. There are 4 rods in onechain.
Thefurlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. This was standardised to be exactly 40 rods or 10 chains.
Anacre was the amount of land tillable by one man behind one team of eight oxen in one day. Traditional acres were long and narrow due to the difficulty in turning the plough and thevalue of river front access.
Anoxgang was the amount of land tillable by one ox in a ploughing season. This could vary from village to village, but was typically around 15 acres.
Avirgate was the amount of land tillable by two oxen in a ploughing season.
Acarucate was the amount of land tillable by a team of eight oxen in a ploughing season. This was equal to 8 oxgangs or 4 virgates.
Thevirgate,yardland, oryard of land (Latin:virgāta [terrae]) was anEnglish unit of land. Primarily a measure oftax assessment rather thanarea, the virgate was usually (but not always) reckoned as1⁄4hide and notionally (but seldom exactly) equal to 30acres. It was equivalent to two of theDanelaw'soxgangs.
Look upvirgate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
The name derives from theOld Englishgyrd landes ("yard of land"),[1] from “yard's” former meaning as a measuring stick employed in reckoningacres (cf.rod). The word is etymologically unrelated to theyard of land around a dwelling.[2] "Virgate" is a much laterretronym,anglicizing the yardland'slatinized formvirgāta after the advent of theyard rendered the original name ambiguous.[3]
The virgate was reckoned as the amount of land that a team of twooxen could plough in a single annual season. It was equivalent to a quarter of ahide, so was nominally thirtyacres.[4] In some parts of England, it was divided into four nooks (Middle English:noke;Medieval Latin:noca).[5] Nooks were occasionally further divided into a farundel (Middle English:ferthendel;Old English:fēorþan dǣl, "fourth deal, fourth share").[6]
TheDanelaw equivalent of a virgate was twooxgangs or ‘bovates’.[7] These were considered to represent the amount of land that could be worked in a single annual season by a single ox and therefore equated to half a virgate. As such, the oxgang represented a parallel division of thecarucate.
