How big is a bovate of land ?
Steve Bielby
The term bovate of land is used in a record from 1202 which I have found. How
big was a bovate and how was it measured ? Anybody know ? Thanks
--
Steve Bielby
Bielby & Charles
Health & Safety Consultants
Email St...@bielby.demon.co.uk
Bryn Fraser
In article <N.060298.151233.52@bielby>, Steve Bielby
<st...@bielby.demon.co.uk> writes
>The term bovate of land is used in a record from 1202 which I have found. How
>big was a bovate and how was it measured ? Anybody know ? Thanks
>--
the landlord/owner of the land /village an oxgang could be between
14/13.5 acres down to as little 8 acres but a uniform (clerks)
ploughgate appeared to be around 104 acres. But it could range from 60
to 120 acres.
Exact sizes were set by local charter. Circa 1300.
You will have to do the sums yourself, I am hopeless.
>
Bryn
(Figures taken from A.A.M. Duncan. Scotland making of a kingdom.)
Bryn Fraser
Randy Jones
BOVATE
a measure of land known as an oxgang (or as much land as one ox
could plough in a year) varying in amount from 10 to 18 acres
This is from our genealogical dictionary at:
www.charweb.org/gen/gendict.html
- Randy Jones
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On Tue, 2 Jun 1998, Steve Bielby wrote:
> The term bovate of land is used in a record from 1202 which I have found. How
> big was a bovate and how was it measured ? Anybody know ? Thanks
> --
P. Freeman
In article <N.060298.151233.52@bielby>,
st...@bielby.demon.co.uk (Steve Bielby) wrote:
>The term bovate of land is used in a record from 1202 which I have found. How
>big was a bovate and how was it measured ? Anybody know ? Thanks
As I'm sure you will by now have been told, a bovate is a variable
amount of land. In and around Bielby, where the land is flat and
- in medieval times as well as later - subject to waterlogging, as
well as flooding from the Beck, the amount of land that constituted
one bovate is likely to have been greater than in better-drained areas
of the East Riding. As a rough guide, you may assume that it was about
15 or 20 acres.
A bovate need not be a homogeneous block of land : since the available
land was shared out among the inhabitants to ensure that everybody had
a roughly equal slice of wheat land, fallow land, meadow, pasture, ings,
and carrs the bovate would be strips in the open fields, plus some meadow land
and a share of the grazing rights on the common, and a proportionate share of
the rights to take turves and hay (I'm not sure about fish and fowl) from the
carrs.
I'm reasonably sure of the correctness of the above *as it applies to Bielby*.
I do not claim it to be generally applicable.
Pete Freeman,
University of Leeds
Susan Perrett
-=> Quoting st...@bielby.demon.co.uk to All on 03 Jun 98 09:12:33 <=-
st> Subject: How big is a bovate of land ?
st> The term bovate of land is used in a record from 1202 which I have
st> found. How big was a bovate and how was it measured ? Anybody know ?
A Bovate is one eighth of a Ploughland.
A Ploughland is The area of land that could be cultivated in a year, using
a single oxteam.
Susan
(GOON member 2869 - One-Name Study for ALSTON)
E-Mail = sus...@st.net.au
WEB PAGE = http://www.st.net.au/~susanp/index.htm
... RESEARCHING ALSTON\CHUDLEIGH\HOLTTUM\OXENDEN\BOURCHIER\DE BOHUN in UK