Charles Hunt wrote:Love the first picture.
Wasn't one definition of an acre as the area that a man (presumably plus horse!) could plough in a day?
<mediaeval history nerd
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.. which, in turn, explains why it (and furlong) were variable measures for many centuries, dependent on the heaviness of the soil ..
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[one of the history dons at my Cambridge College, by then old, was the first post-elementary educated member of his local farming family. He offered guided walk to undergraduates - taking all sorts of degree subjects - around the local fen villages. He would jump into drainage ditches with a trowel to scoop up samples of muddy soil, pointing out that where the soil was light the field might well be called something like 'long acre', hedged or walled accordingly, because the horse plough could finish a larger area within the day. Analogously, an apparently small (by evidence of walls/hedges or their former lines) enclosure would show clayier trowelfuls in the ditches. He would also carry copies of pertinent mediaeval or Tudor/Stuart era local maps. Fascinating! Much of the evidence, however, was even then, '60s, disappearing as the fields were being enlarged for the bigger machinery]
(mere guide at) Jet Age Museum, Gloucestershire Airport
http://www.jetagemuseum.org/TripAdvisor Excellence Award 2015
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction ... gland.html