Allotment Plot Size

[Alison]

Blimey some of you have tiny plots! Mine is about 40' by 80'. I have about a quarter to fruit, a bit more than half devoted to a four bed veg rotation, a 10 by 20' tunnel and the remainder with flowers, herbs and seed saving beds.

[Loudbarker1]

What is this gobbledigook about poles and rods? Never come across that, before!

Rods, poles and perches are different names for the same unit. Medieval ploughing was done with oxen, up to 4 pairs at a time. The ploughman handled the plough. His boy controlled the oxen using a stick, which had to be long enough to reach all the oxen. This was the rod, pole or perch. It was an obvious implement to measure the fields, such as 4 poles to the chain. A BBC webpage about allotments says that "an allotment plot is 10 poles" and claims that "A pole is measured as the length from the back of the plough to the nose of the ox". Iif you wanted to control the front ox, you needed a pole long enough to reach! The perch was used in the reign of Henry II (1154-1189), the pole since the 16C, and the rod since 1450. In the 16th century the lawful rod was decreed to be the combined length of the left feet of 16 men as they left church on a Sunday morning. In North Devon there is a tradition that fencing, that is to say the cutting and laying of a hedge, would be done at so much a land yard, which seemed to be about 5 paces or 5.5 yards, which would equate to a rod, pole or perch. An earlier name for a rod was a gyrd which is the derivation of a yard.

Hope this helps :-))

[SlugLobber]

Rods, poles and perches are different names for the same unit. Medieval ploughing was done with oxen, up to 4 pairs at a time. The ploughman handled the plough. His boy controlled the oxen using a stick, which had to be long enough to reach all the oxen. This was the rod, pole or perch. It was an obvious implement to measure the fields, such as 4 poles to the chain. A BBC webpage about allotments says that "an allotment plot is 10 poles" and claims that "A pole is measured as the length from the back of the plough to the nose of the ox". Iif you wanted to control the front ox, you needed a pole long enough to reach! The perch was used in the reign of Henry II (1154-1189), the pole since the 16C, and the rod since 1450. In the 16th century the lawful rod was decreed to be the combined length of the left feet of 16 men as they left church on a Sunday morning. In North Devon there is a tradition that fencing, that is to say the cutting and laying of a hedge, would be done at so much a land yard, which seemed to be about 5 paces or 5.5 yards, which would equate to a rod, pole or perch. An earlier name for a rod was a gyrd which is the derivation of a yard.

Hope this helps :-))

Very informative! Sounds a bit subjective, though, like the origins of hands for horses!
Every day's a school day, as they say!

[Aberdeenplotter]

And whats that in meters?

I use an online conversion tool, plenty available