Virgate
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "Hatnote". Template:Anthropic Farm Units The virgate, yardland, or yard of land (Template:Langx [Script error: No such module "Lang".]) was an English unit of land. Primarily a measure of tax assessment rather than area, the virgate was usually (but not always) reckoned as Template:1/4 hide and notionally (but seldom exactly) equal to 30 acres. It was equivalent to two of the Danelaw's oxgangs.
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Name
Template:Sister project The name derives from the Old English Script error: No such module "Lang". ("yard of land"),[1] from “yard's” former meaning as a measuring stick employed in reckoning acres (cf. rod). The word is etymologically unrelated to the yard of land around a dwelling.[2] "Virgate" is a much later retronym, anglicizing the yardland's latinized form virgāta after the advent of the yard rendered the original name ambiguous.[3]
History
The virgate was reckoned as 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.[4] In some parts of England, it was divided into four nooks (Template:Langx; Template:Langx).[5] Nooks were occasionally further divided into a farundel (Template:Langx; Template:Langx, "fourth deal, fourth share").[6]
The Danelaw equivalent of a virgate was two oxgangs 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 the carucate.
References
- ↑ Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "yardland, n.". Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1921.
- ↑ Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "yard, n.2". Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1921.
- ↑ Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "virgate, n.". Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1917.
- ↑ D. Hey ed., Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996), 476.
- ↑ "Noca - nook (measure of land)" R. W. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-list (Oxford University Press, London: for British Academy 1965), 312.
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Stephen Friar, Batsford Companion to Local History (Batsford, London 1991), 270.