The virgate, yardland, or yard of land ( terrae) was an English units of land. Primarily a measure of tax assessment rather than area, the virgate was usually (but not always) reckoned as hide and notionally (but seldom exactly) equal to 30 . It was equivalent to two of the Danelaw's .
Name
The name derives from the
Old English gyrd landes ("yard of land"),
[ Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "yardland, n.". Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1921.] from “yard's” former meaning as a measuring stick employed in reckoning
(cf. rod). The word is etymologically unrelated to the yard of land around a dwelling.
[ Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "yard, n.2". Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1921.] "Virgate" is a much later
retronym,
anglicizing the yardland's latinized form
virgāta after the advent of the
yard rendered the original name ambiguous.
[ Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "virgate, n.". Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1917.]
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.
[D. Hey ed., Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996), 476.] In some parts of England, it was divided into four nooks (; ).
["Noca - nook (measure of land)" R. W. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-list (Oxford University Press, London: for British Academy 1965), 312.] Nooks were occasionally further divided into a farundel (; , "fourth deal, fourth share").
The Danelaw equivalent of a virgate was two or ‘bovates’.[Stephen Friar, Batsford Companion to Local History (Batsford, London 1991), 270.] 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.
