Virgate
The virgate, yardland, or yard of land (
Latin: virgāta [terrae]) was an English unit of land. Primarily a measure of tax assessment rather than area, the virgate was usually (but not always) reckoned as 1⁄4 hide and notionally (but seldom exactly) equal to 30 acres. It was equivalent to two of the Danelaw's oxgangs
.
Name
The name derives from the Old English gyrd landes ("yard of land"),
History
The virgate was reckoned as the amount of land that a team of two
Old English: fēorþan dǣl, "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.
- ^ Bosworth, Joseph; T. Northcote Toller (1882). An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford University Press. p. 281.
- ^ Stephen Friar, Batsford Companion to Local History (Batsford, London 1991), 270.