Virgate
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- The rod is a historical unit of length equal to 5½ yards. It may have originated from the typical length of a mediaeval ox-goad.
- The furlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. This was standardised to be exactly 40 rods.
- An acre was the amount of land tillable by one man behind one ox in one day. Traditional acres were long and narrow due to the difficulty in turning the plough.
- An oxgang 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.
- A virgate was the amount of land tillable by two oxen in a ploughing season.
- A carucate 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.
The virgate (Medieval Latin: virgāta) or yardland (Middle English: yardland ) was a unit of land area measurement used in medieval England, typically outside the Danelaw, and was held to be the amount of land that a team of two oxen could plough in a single annual season. It was equivalent to a quarter of a hide, so was nominally thirty acres.[1] A ‘virgater’ would thus be a peasant who occupied or worked this area of land, and a ‘half virgater’ would be a person who occupied or worked about 15 acres (61,000 m2).
The Danelaw equivalent of a virgate was two oxgangs, or ‘bovates’:[2] as these names imply, the oxgang or bovate was 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 the carucate. Accordingly, a 'bovater' is the Danelaw equivalent of a half virgater.
‘Virgate’ is an anglicisation of the Medieval Latin virgata. In some parts of England it was divided into four nooks (Middle English: noke ; Medieval Latin: noca).[3] Nooks were occasionally further divided into a farundel (Middle English: ferthendel ; Old English: fēorþan dǣl, "fourth deal, fourth share").[4]
[edit] References
- ^ D. Hey ed., Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996), 476.
- ^ Stephen Friar, Batsford Companion to Local History (Batsford, London 1991), 270.
- ^ "Noca - nook (measure of land)" R. W. Latham, Revised Mediaval Latin Word-list (Oxford University Press, London: for British Academy 1965), 312.
- ^ Bosworth, Joseph; T. Northcote Toller (1882). An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford University Press. p. 281. http://books.google.com/books?id=oXlii1KgDngC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false.
