Hide
Area · Also called: mansus, carucate, ploughland, virgate, yardland, oxgang, bovate
That is
No fixed size
1 hide (hide)
- Period: 7th century to the 12th
- Region: England south and west of the Danelaw
- Goods: taxation
- No fixed area. Conventionally reckoned at 120 acres, about 48.6 ha, but that is a tax convention and not a survey.
Values
| Value | That is | Period | Used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| hideNo fixed area. Conventionally reckoned at 120 acres, about 48.6 ha, but that is a tax convention and not a survey. | No fixed size | 7th century to the 12th | taxation · England south and west of the Danelaw |
| carucateNotionally 120 acres, about 48.6 ha; an assessment, not a measured area. | No fixed size | 10th century to the 13th | taxation · the Danelaw |
| virgateNotionally 30 acres, about 12.1 ha, and seldom exact. | No fixed size | c. 9th century to the 14th | peasant holdings · England |
| oxgangNotionally 15 acres, about 6.1 ha, and highly variable between counties and manors. | No fixed size | 10th century to the 16th | peasant holdings · the Danelaw and Scotland |
What the unit was used for
These are not areas in the modern sense at all but units of assessment, which is why the tool gives them no size.
A hide was the land thought sufficient to support one household, and it carried the obligations an Anglo-Saxon king cared about: food-rent, work on bridges and fortifications, service in the fyrd and later the geld.
The Danelaw counties used the carucate or ploughland instead, divided into eight oxgangs.
The family is tied to the eight-ox plough team rather than to any length: an oxgang is what one ox contributed to the team in a season and a virgate what two oxen could till.
In the Domesday survey of 1086 land yielding one pound a year tended to be assessed at one hide, which shows how far assessment had drifted from acreage.
In the system
1 hide = 4 virgates; 1 carucate = 4 virgates = 8 oxgangs