Welsh units facts for kids

Long ago, before Wales became part of the United Kingdom, people there used their own special ways to measure things. These were called Welsh units of measurement. They were used from around the time the Roman Empire left Britain until the 1200s, when England took over Wales and brought in English units. Today, Wales uses the same metric and Imperial units as the rest of Britain.

Measuring Length in Old Wales

In ancient Wales, especially in the northern kingdom of Gwynedd, people had unique ways to measure length. Some old laws even said that the size of an inch could be decided by the width of a judge's thumb! For longer measurements, a "rod" could be "as long as the tallest man in the village, with his hand above his head."

Here's how some of their length units worked:

• 3 barleycorns (a barleycorn is a grain of barley) = 1 inch (modfedd)
• 3 inches = 1 palm (palf)
• 3 palms = 1 foot (troedfedd)
• 3 feet = 1 pace (cam)
• 4 feet = 1 short yoke (byr iau)
• 8 feet = 1 field yoke (veieu)
• 3 paces = 1 leap (naid)
• 12 feet = 1 lateral yoke (gesseylyeu)
• 16 feet = 1 long yoke (hir iau) or rod (gwialen)
• 3 leaps = 1 land (tir)
• 1000 lands = 1 mile (milltir)

Measuring Land Area

The main unit for measuring land in old Wales was the Welsh acre, called erw. Imagine a field that was as wide as a man could reach with a long stick (about 16 Welsh feet) in both directions. Its length was 30 times that width.

Here are some of the area units:

• 1 acre (erw) was about 1,440 square imperial yards.
• 4 acres = 1 homestead (tyddyn)
• 4 homesteads = 1 shareland (rhandir)
• 4 sharelands = 1 holding (gafael)
• 4 holdings = 1 township (tref)
• 4 townships = 1 manor (maenor)
• 12 and a half manors = 1 commote (cwmwd)
• 2 commotes = 1 cantref (which was about 25,600 acres)

It's important to know that commotes and cantrefs were also political areas, so their actual sizes could be different. Sometimes, the size of a homestead also changed depending on who owned it. For example, a nobleman's homestead might be 12 Welsh acres, while a serf's (a person who worked the land for someone else) might be 8 acres. However, most people generally understood a homestead to be 4 acres.

In southern Wales, they had slightly different ways of measuring land:

• 1 acre was 2 rods by 18 rods.
• 312 acres = 1 shareland
• 3 sharelands owned by serfs = 1 serf-town
• 4 sharelands owned by free people = 1 free town
• 7 serf-towns = 1 lowland manor (about 936 acres)
• 12 free towns = 1 upland manor (about 1248 acres)

Measuring Volume

For measuring volume, like how much grain or liquid there was, they used a unit called the Hestawr.

• 1 Hestawr = 2 Winchester bushels (a bushel is an old unit for dry goods like grain).

Measuring Time

The ancient Welsh had a different way of counting days in a week. Instead of our seven-day week, they used an eight or nine-day week! Even today, the modern Welsh word for "week" is wythnos, which literally means "eight nights."

See also

• Roman units
• English units
• Historical weights and measures