Andy, Let me suppose you are reading the Griffith's Valuation or the TAB, where tenants are taxed on the size of their land holdings, expressed in Acres, Roods, and Perches. A perch is an area of land amounting to 1/40 th of a rood. A rood is an area of land amounting to 1/4 th of an acre. One acre is defined as 160 square poles. Lengths of land bounds are frequently expressed in poles (or rods), with a pole defined as 1/160 th of a mile. Up to this point, the definitions apply to both Irish land measurement and US land (statute) measurements. The thing you must remember is that all of the Irish land measurements are based on the Irish mile, which is longer than the US statute mile One statute mile is defined as 5280 feet, or 320 poles, (16 1/2 feet to the pole). One Irish mile is defined as 6720 feet, or 320 poles, (21 feet to the pole). Doing the arithmetic, you can find that an Irish acre is about 1.62 statute acres, so the Irish farms were a bit larger than you might have thought. More on this subject can be found at: _Acre (Irish) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre_(Irish)) Pat Understanding land measurement takes some time. Square poles will make more sense when you get a round tuit. =================================================================== In a message dated 4/28/2012 4:47:46 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, namac@rogers.com writes: Christina: What are perches? Surely it has nothing to do with birds? Andy McAuliffe Kitchener, Canada ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tipperary Queries http://pub14.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=1200795777&frmid=84& cmd=show ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to IRL-TIPPERARY-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message