Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/463

 9* s. vi. NOT. IT, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 383 so that, to havo measured the one and ignored the other would have been unscientific ; hut to have added an acre of messuage to the hide, and thereby increased it from 120 to 121 acres, would have been hiehly incon- venient so long as men still continued to use the hide or its parts either as areal or as fiscal measures. The proper way to do it was to add the acre of messuage to the 120 acres of arable land and divide the sum by 120, thereby increasing the size of the acre from 4,800 to 4.840 square yards. Tt was easier to increase the size of the acre than that of the hide or its parts. An acre containing 4,800 square yards could be conveniently measured by the dercmrxda, or ten-foot rod, and this strain would bring English into connexion with Roman land measures. It could also be measured by H rod of IS feet, a length which would give suf- ficient standing-room for four oxen yoked together, and make the base of the acre 60 feet. But if we add 40 square yards to such an acre it can no longer be convenientlv measured by either of such rods. A rectangle of somewhat different shape has to be con- structed, and if 4 roods are to lie side by side the rod for measuring the acre of 4,840 square yards should be Ifiifeet in length, and the rood should consist, of a strip of 16$ feet in breadth and 660 feet in length, or its equivalent in some other form. The modern acre is composed of four such roods. When that acre began toT e regarded as the standard it would be hard to say. Prof. Maitland ob- serves that, the Statute of Admeasurement, which is alleged to have been passed in the thirteenth century, "has not been traced to any authoritative source," and he regards it as " apocryphal "*; and Mr. Seebohm has shown that an acre 4 nerches in breadth "id 40 in length was used in France during the ninth century.t According to the Brehon code of law the building-plots and houses of the ancient Irish wer» arranged on a graduated system. "The freeman." says Sir Samuel Ferguson.? " should havo a, house of riven dimensions, ranging from 17 to 27 feet in length, and containing a given number of compartments. The houses were of timber »nd watMe-work. surrounded bv open spaces of prescribed extent for each clans. The lower limit for this space was the distance to which the owner. Rented at his door, could throw a missile of a given weight: multiples of that distance deter- mined its extent for the higher classes." 1 'Domesday Book and Beyond,' pp. 369, 371, notes. + • Knglish Villnee Commnnitv,' T>. 385. t "Encvclrm. T(ri».,"iv. 252. In Ireland the open space.was.called telb. He then refers to the well-known passage in Tacitus* which states that the ancient Ger- man surrounded his house by an open space (spatium). In the last paragraph of my previous article "four half-roods" should be tight half-roods. S. O. ADDY. (To be continued,) WHITGIFTS HOSPITAL. CROYDON. (Confimifd from p. 342.) THE dining hall and kitchen constitute the north-east end of the quadrangle. The former is a large and comfortable room : the tables are not so ancient as those in the audience chamber, though bearing the date 1614. The windows are plain, with the exception of a little coloured glass and the coat of arms of Whitgift and another bishop. There are several frames hung on the walls, one con- taining the inscription removed from the founder's monument in the church, as its state of dilapidation was such as to render some such measures necessary. Another, painted on wood, has the following, and might, with profit to those who have diverted to a great extent the archbishop's bequest, be pondered over :— Feci quod notui, potui quod, Christe. dedisti, Improba, fac melius (si potes). invidia. The courteous Warden translated it thus : " I have done all I could, all that was given me by our Lord to do : roav my evil traducers do better if they can." This hall is now used by the " board " as a meeting-room. I under- stand that the " brethren " dine there no* only twice a year. There are some books in a bookcase or two, and a few on the tables, including one or two old Bibles. The kitchen, which is at the extreme end of the quadrangle and joins the hall, is interesting from the fact that the old fireplace and corners are almost intact, only one side is now occupied by a modern washing boiler. The buttery hatch, through which food was passed from kitchen to hall, can still be seen. The windows and mullions are thp original ones, and there is a small receptacle for storing the bread which was intended to ferment and be used as yeast is to-day. From the inner porch the archbishop's rooms are reached by a short, but steep stair, at the top of which is a beautiful old six- teenth-century door, and entering the audi- ence chamber one feela ushered into the presence of some of the mighty dead. It is no great stretch of imagination to picture
 * 'Germ.,'16.