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Greymouth Evening Star, 17 August 1935, Page 8

ORIGIN OF TERMS.

It may have been a source of wonder to many how the terms rod, pole and perch eyer came to be used in the measurement of land; why they are of such inconvenient lengths. An article in the last number of the “New Zealand Surveyor” explains the mystery. There is a certain property known to us, says the writer, containing one acre one rood one perch. The owner. jocularly referring to this area, was in the habit of saying that the perch was in the fowlhouse. He spoke more truly than he knew. A friend has sent us from England a picture postcard of an old building with a most interesting archaeological note regarding it which throw’s light on our measures of length and area and their origin.

The open fields or strips of land were usually ten chains or 220 yards in length. This had been found the average distance that a team of eight oxen could comfortably draw the manor plough w’ithout stopping (a furrow long, or furlong). The staff the driver carried was five and a half yards, or IGA feet long. This also had been found to be the most convenient length of a rod for reaching any one of his team that he thought needed a little gentle persuasion.

Ploughed in this way, an English apre would be ten chains long and one chain wide, and would represent a very good day’s work. When, therefore, the ploughman could use the staff as a pole, and measure 55 yards across the ploughing. he knew that they had finished 1210 square yards, or a quarter of an acre, and that four of these (22 yards or a chain), would mean the 4840 square yards of our rather mjr.terious English acre, and at night the same staff could- be used as a Yerch for the fowls in their common dwelling-house (common to the driver and his family as well as the fowls). In this way a staff 5J yards or 16J feet long, was used as a rod for driving the oxen; as a pole for measuring the land; and as a perch for the poultry when the day’s work was done: —the "rod, pole, or perch” of our earlier days. Well, to think of that now. The modern brass box with five or ten chains length of steel riband wound into it is easier to carry than a 165 foot pole, and the surveyor gets over the country quicker than heavy-foot-ed Hodge with his oxen plodding his way home. But his spirit is with us still, and his measures of length still bind us to Mother Earth and long-for-gotten social life and “standards of comfort.”