Snippets By Paul Heley
Doing the simple arithmetic, it follows that a palm is 3 inches ; a span is 9 inches ; a cubit is 18 inches ; a rod is 198 inches (or 16.5 feet or 5.5 yards) ; a chain is 792 inches (or 66 feet or 22 yards) ; a furlong is 660 feet or 220 yards ; and a mile is 5280 feet or 1760 yards. A long way round to get to the same place! It’s interesting to note that a cricket pitch is one chain (ie 22 yards) in length - which means that a ball bowled at 90 mph doesn’t take very long to reach the batsman! That’s why top batsmen have some of the quickest reactions in sport - certainly as quick as F1 drivers. Another old unit which, I believe, is still used in the tailoring industry is the Ell. This is 5 spans in length which makes it 45 inches. It was originally the distance from the shoulder to the wrist and could have been an approximate measure when reeling off from a roll of cloth ; it’s similar to another measure which I remember, namely that a yard is roughly the distance from the tip of your nose to the end of your fingers. It works remarkably well for adult men. Many of these early measures have origins based upon the physical sizes of kings, dukes or local members of the aristocracy, eg it’s been suggested that a foot was the length of Henry 1st’s foot (although this would give him very big feet). And from an agricultural base, a furlong comes from “furrow long” and represented the distance a plough team of 8 oxen could “furrow” without having to rest. Also 10 square chains equalled an acre which was the area of land able to be ploughed by a team of 8 oxen by 1 man in 1 day. But this - and pretty well all the other early units - must have varied tremendously from place to place and soil to soil. It was not until the 19th century that they were stabilised. The unit called the nautical mile comes from 6 feet = 1 fathom ; 100 fathoms = 1 cable ; 10 cables = 1 nautical mile. But this comes to 6000 feet whereas the accepted figure is 6080 feet so where has the extra 80 feet come from? The answer seems to be because 6000 feet is very close to 6080 feet and this is the length of a minute of latitude. So the nautical mile has been set at 6080 feet. A further nautical distance is the league which is 3 nautical miles. Many of the older units have a Roman origin and we had 2 palms = 1 shaftment ; 5 shaftments = 1 pace ; 2 paces = 1 grade or step ; 4 steps = 1 rope ; 5 ropes = 1 chain ; 50 chains = 1 Roman mile. Do the arithmetic and a Roman mile becomes 5000 feet (compare with 5280 feet). We could also get to the same point
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by saying that a Roman mile was 1000 double paces (1000 grades) of the Roman foot soldier (ie 1000 X 5 ft = 5000 ft). Note that it is from the Latin mille passus (1000 steps) that we get our Mile. But these Roman distances are all slightly smaller than our British equivalents because the Romans were a bit smaller than we are so their marching pace would be less than that for a more recent British soldier. Other measures follow similarly - so Roman lengths and distances, although possibly having the same name as ours, are usually smaller. The early unit of area was the Hide which was commonly broken down into smaller fractions. When one reads the records of villages made during William the Conqueror’s Domesday survey of 1086, areas of land suitable for taxation purposes - because that was the object of the survey - were listed either directly in hides and/or in the different subdivisions. There is much controversy over the actual number of acres which make a hide but the usual number accepted is 120 (but can vary depending upon the quality of the land and, therefore, its taxable value). A hide (also known as a carucate) was an AngloSaxon unit and was considered to be the amount of land necessary to support a family. There are various sub- and super- divisions of the hide with multiples such as a ferundel being 7.5 or 10 acres dependent upon where you live. There were 2 ferundels making a bovate (or oxgang) having 15 or 20 acres. Then 2 bovates were the same as a yardland or a virgate and that 4 virgates made a hide. So a hide could be either 120 acres or 160 acres dependent upon your starting point. And with regard to the actual area of a hide, it varied from place to place around the country and was very dependent upon local factors such as soil fertility or difficulty of terrain. On the larger scale, there was (still is) the hundred which, again, has many different definitions amongst historians but is usually accepted as meaning an area of 100 hides. Hundreds were subdivisions of shires or counties (administrative units not defined by area) and larger counties had more hundreds than smaller counties (eg Bedfordshire, one of the smaller counties, has 9 hundreds). In Yorkshire, there were (still are) three ridings (the name comes from the Norse meaning a third - but they were never equal in area). At the Joe Everyman level, the basic area was the acre and we have already seen that an acre is the equivalent of 10 square chains or 66 ft by 660 ft (ie a chain by a furlong) which would have been understood by the ordinary man.
