THE MILE'S. LENGTH

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 16, 18 July 1931, Page 22

THE MILE'S. LENGTH

Hot until as late as 1824, under an Act passed ,in, England in that year for the "ascertaining; and establishing of uniformity, of weights and measures,'' did the mile of 1760 yards become the legal :mile for all purposes within tho United Kingdom. Writing in the "Geographical Journal," XdeutenantColonel J. B. P. Karslakc contributes some notes upon the early linear measurement of England. It h.as. been definitely established, he states, that the early English mile had but .little relation to the mile in use to-day. There are considerable difficulties in determining with any degree of accuracy the length of the mile in use even at the end of the fourteenth century. Conflicting evidence makes the task almost impossible. A close study of what is known of the Bodelian map of that era, in a mean of-eight measurements, gives ten furlongs, with variations of nearly eleven to eight furlongs. The only conclusion that can be arrived at is that the mile in uso in the fourteenth century was not less than ten furlongs. : .

There are some indications, however, that, the fourteenth-century mile was eleven furlongs in length. In a book written in 1344 it is stated that "Dover is twelve English miles asunder from Canterbury by England accountage." Some ' 300 years later the same road ■was measured by the eight-furlong mile then, being brought into use to determine mileage rates for postal purposes. It was then officially reported that "the postmaster's deputies and hackneymen of Dover and Canterbury have measured the highway between Dover and Canterbury, and have set up posts at every mile, and expressed the same to be fifteen and a quarter miles." This measurement gives the twelve English miles of 1344 a length of exactly eleven furlongs. This seems to be identical with the old British mile of 1500 paces. In 1670 the surveyor for the Post Office

DUE TO POST OFFICE

officially adopted.a mile of 1760 yards in place, of the British, mile of 2428 yards hitherto in common use.

The mile of eleven furlongs or 1500 paces is believed to be identical with the leuga, the common unit of maximum linear measure in use from the early Saxon times until the fourteenth century. In the Domesday survey, the measurements used were the. leuga, furlong, perch, and foot; substantially the same as our present system, except that eleven furlongs made one leuga. This leuga scale was introduced into England by the Belgic Gauls in the first century 8.C., and it is almost certain that the Saxons adopted it from the early British inhabitants. The first known official mention of the eightfurlong mile is found in an Act of Parliament of 1502, when it became the legal mile for ' limiting new buildings round London and Westminster, but it had no statutory force elsewhere. The circumstance which gave tho eightfurlong mile general application throughout England as a whole was the establishment of the Post Office in the reign of James I. The eight-furlong mile was then used to determine the mileage rates for horse hire for postal carriage along the principal roads of the country. ;

The confusion duo to the lack of uniformity before" the eight-furlong mile was fixed may be better understood from an extract from Plot's "Natural History of Oxfordshire," published in 1677. Writing of a map, Plot says: "As for the scale of miles, there being three sets in Oxfordshire, the greater, the less, and the middle miles, as almost everywhere else, it is contrived according to the middle set of them. For these I conceive to be truo Oxfordshire miles, which upon actual dimensuration I found at several places to contain for the most part nine furlongs and a quarter, of which about sixty answer to a degree."