The virgate, yardland, or yard of land ( la, virgāta was an English unit of land. Primarily a measure of

tax assessment Tax assessment, or assessment, is the job of determining the value, and sometimes determining the use, of property, usually to calculate a property tax. This is usually done by an office called the assessor or tax assessor. Governments need ...

rather than

area Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a region on the plane or on a curved surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while '' surface area'' refers to the area of an op ...

, the virgate was usually (but not always) reckoned as hide and notionally (but seldom exactly) equal to 30

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

s. It was equivalent to two of the

Danelaw The Danelaw (, also known as the Danelagh; ang, Dena lagu; da, Danelagen) was the part of England in which the laws of the Danes held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. The Danelaw contrasts with the West Saxon law and the Mercian ...

oxgang An oxgang or bovate ( ang, oxangang; da, oxgang; gd, damh-imir; lat-med, bovāta) is an old land measurement formerly used in Scotland and England as early as the 16th century sometimes referred to as an oxgait. It averaged around 20 English a ...

s. __NOTOC__

Name

The name derives from the Old English ' ("yard of land"), from "yard"'s former meaning as a measuring stick employed in reckoning

s (cf. rod). The word is etymologically unrelated to the

yard The yard (symbol: yd) is an English unit of length in both the British imperial and US customary systems of measurement equalling 3 feet or 36 inches. Since 1959 it has been by international agreement standardized as exactly ...

of land around a dwelling. "Virgate" is a much later

retronym A retronym is a newer name for an existing thing that helps differentiate the original form/version from a more recent one. It is thus a word or phrase created to avoid confusion between older and newer types, whereas previously (before there were ...

, anglicizing the yardland's latinized form ''virgāta'' after the advent of the

rendered the original name ambiguous.

History

The virgate was reckoned as the amount of land that a team of two

oxen An ox ( : oxen, ), also known as a bullock (in BrE, AusE, and IndE), is a male bovine trained and used as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle; castration inhibits testosterone and aggression, which makes th ...

could plough in a single annual season. It was equivalent to a quarter of a hide, so was nominally thirty

acres The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

. In some parts of England, it was divided into four nooks ( enm, noke; lat-med, noca). Nooks were occasionally further divided into a farundel ( enm, ferthendel; ang, fēorþan dǣl, "fourth deal, fourth share"). The

equivalent of a virgate was two

s or ‘bovates’.Stephen Friar, ''Batsford Companion to Local History'' (Batsford, London 1991), 270. 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 the

carucate The carucate or carrucate ( lat-med, carrūcāta or ) was a medieval unit of land area approximating the land a plough team of eight oxen could till in a single annual season. It was known by different regional names and fell under different forms ...

References

{{Reflist Units of area Obsolete units of measurement