The virgate, yardland, or yard of land ( was an

English unit English units were the units of measurement used in England up to 1826 (when they were replaced by Imperial units), which evolved as a combination of the Anglo-Saxon and Roman systems of units. Various standards have applied to English units at ...

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 to ...

rather than

area Area is the measure of a region's size on a 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 open surface or the boundary of a three-di ...

, 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 measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

s. It was equivalent to two of the

Danelaw The Danelaw (, ; ; ) was the part of History of Anglo-Saxon England, England between the late ninth century and the Norman Conquest under Anglo-Saxon rule in which Danes (tribe), Danish laws applied. The Danelaw originated in the conquest and oc ...

oxgang An oxgang or bovate (; ; ; ) 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 acres, but was based on land fertility and cultivation, a ...

s. __NOTOC__

Name

The name derives from the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

' ("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 units, English unit of length in both the British imperial units, imperial and US United States customary units, customary systems of measurement equalling 3 foot (unit), feet or 36 inches. Sinc ...

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

retronym A retronym is a newer name for something that differentiates it from something else that is newer, similar, or seen in everyday life; thus, avoiding confusion between the two. Etymology The term ''retronym'', a neologism composed of the combi ...

, 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, British, AusE, Australian, and IndE, Indian English), is a large bovine, trained and used as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castration, castrated adult male cattle, because castration i ...

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 British imperial and the United States 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, ...

. In some parts of England, it was divided into four nooks (; ). Nooks were occasionally further divided into a farundel (; , "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 ( 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 of tax assessment. ...

References

{{Reflist Units of area Obsolete units of measurement