THE RETURN OF OWNERS LAND, 1873 Ancestry has added to its data base a list of land owners a survey done at request of government in 1872 the list may be looked at by shire, eg gloucester, Leicester it lists owner, and their address ( not always on land) it gives land size in acres roods and poles and estimated yearly rental value a rood is a quarter acre a pole is same as a rod or perch (5.5 yards) jim

<<snipped>> a pole is same as a rod or perch (5.5 yards) <<snipped>> Not quite - these old units require a bit of brain-bashing, I'm afraid, not least because of their historical origins resulting in obscure definitions. Anyway, of pole, rod, perch and 5.5 yards... Pole is a measure of area Rod is a measure of length Perch is a measure of area 5.5 yards is, of course, a measure of length. A pole, a perch and a SQUARE rod are all the same. A square rod is a square whose sides are 1 rod long, and 1 rod does equal 5.5 yards (5.5 yds being, "of course", a quarter of a chain - a.k.a. a quarter of a cricket pitch, is it not?) Incidentally, the Michael Wood program on Kibworth the other night noted that an acre was approximately the amount of land tillable by one man behind an ox in one day - but this varied by soil type so that, in medieval times, an acre on heavy clay would be smaller than an acre on light soil as the clay ploughman could do less in the day. Adrian B