A yoke was a unit of land measurement used in

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

in England at the time of the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

for tax purposes. It was equal to a quarter of a ''sulung''. A sulung was the amount of land which could be ploughed by 4 ox-pairs (or approximately 2 hides, thus a yoke was half a hide), therefore a yoke was a pair of oxen, representing the amount of land that could be cultivated by an ox pair. A

yoke A yoke is a wooden beam sometimes used between a pair of oxen or other animals to enable them to pull together on a load when working in pairs, as oxen usually do; some yokes are fitted to individual animals. There are several types of yoke, u ...

also described the device used to harness two oxen together (see photo). Angles, Saxons, Jutes in Britain year 600

In early Saxon times nearly all the Weald of Kent, the land between the chalk ridges of the

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north ...

and South Downs, was covered in ancient broadleaf forest but there are indications that much of what is now

Penshurst Penshurst is a historic village and civil parish located in a valley upon the northern slopes of the Kentish Weald, at the confluence of the River Medway and the River Eden, within the Sevenoaks district of Kent, England. The village is situ ...

had been cultivated clearings since Roman days. The

Romans Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

left no tangible relics although we have a record of their measurement for land in the "Yokes" of Chested, Vexour, Chafford etc. The yoke is the old Roman ''

jugerum The jugerum or juger ( la, iūgerum, ', ', or ') was a Roman unit of area, equivalent to a rectangle 240 Roman feet in length and 120 feet in width (about 71×35½m), i.e. 28,800 square Roman feet ( la, pedes quadratum) or about hectare (0.62 ...

'', about 25 ares or 0.625 acres. This word has survived only in Kent. One theory is that the

Jutes The Jutes (), Iuti, or Iutæ ( da, Jyder, non, Jótar, ang, Ēotas) were one of the Germanic tribes who settled in Great Britain after the departure of the Romans. According to Bede, they were one of the three most powerful Germanic nation ...

from

Jutland Jutland ( da, Jylland ; german: Jütland ; ang, Ēota land ), known anciently as the Cimbric or Cimbrian Peninsula ( la, Cimbricus Chersonesus; da, den Kimbriske Halvø, links=no or ; german: Kimbrische Halbinsel, links=no), is a peninsula of ...

conquered Kent, whereas the

Angles The Angles ( ang, Ængle, ; la, Angli) were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period. They founded several kingdoms of the Heptarchy in Anglo-Saxon England. Their name is the root of the name ...

and

Saxons The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic * * * * peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...

(c 450 AD) settled over the remainder of England. In these "yokes" along the banks of the river Medway crops such as corn would have been cultivated. A ''joch'' is a traditional unit of area in German speaking countries, especially in

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. One ''joch'' is the area of a square 40 ''

klafter The ''klafter'' is an historical unit of length, volume and area that was used in Central Europe. Unit of length As a unit of length, the ''klafter'' was derived from the span of a man's outstretched arms and was traditionally about 1.80 metr ...

s'' (about 83 yards) on a side. This comes to 0.5755

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100- metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is ...

s or about 1.422 acres. The plural is ''Joche''. ''Joch'' is also the word for a yoke in German, so this unit represents an area that could be ploughed in a day by a yoke of oxen. In what is now the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

this unit was known as the ''jitro''; in

Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capit ...

it is the ''jutro''.''How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measurement''
by Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill There are references to the yoke or '' jugum'' in Kentish medieval records and in the Domesday survey. The rental record of Gillingham dated 1477 reveals that the yoke was a fiscal land division for purposes of rents and services, and had its own privileges. Its size was clearly related to its fertility and position. For example, an

Otford Otford is a village and civil parish in the Sevenoaks District of Kent, England. It lies on the River Darent, north of Sevenoaks. Otford's four churches are the Anglican Church of St Bartholomew in the village centre, the Otford Methodist Ch ...

rental of c.1425 lists a full yoke on the fertile soil of the valley as 120 acres, a figure to which many of these yokes approximate, but on the poor clay soils on the Downs one yoke is 231 acres. View towards Otford - geograph

The stability of names of yokes was remarkable: in

, almost all the names recorded in 1285 survived to 1447. The fields of yokes were large enclosures, not open fields, and the land within them, although possibly cultivated co-operatively by many tenants, was usually held severally. It appears that the yoke was a compact holding and this is further suggested by early tenancies. In the 1285 Gillingham

custumal A custumal is a medieval-English document that stipulates the economic, political, and social customs of a manor or town. It is common for it to include an inventory of customs, regular agricultural, trading and financial activities as well as l ...

, it is recorded that 73.6 percent of the tenants possessed a single yoke of land. By 15th century

gavelkind Gavelkind () was a system of land tenure chiefly associated with the Celtic law in Ireland and Wales and with the legal traditions of the English county of Kent. The word may have originated from the Old Irish phrases ''Gabhaltas-cinne'' or ...

tenure gave rise to an accentuated dispersal of settlement in Kent and many holdings were split and became uneconomic. Thus by the 15th century, yokes comprised one or more large fields farmed in many separate parcels. They were fiscal units with certain defined rights and privileges. Most of them still had a central farm, and they had at some time in the past been single land units.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yoke (unit of measurement) Customary units of measurement Systems of units

See also

References