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An allotment in Britian what size are they or do they vary from place to place? I live outside of a small town here in Canada & they tried allotment gardens for a few years but most people gave up as the gardens were vandilized too often. I think that they are a nice idea & wish more people would catch on to the idea. We had some extra garden space that we weren't using one year. We offered it to some folks that we knew that were having a hard time financially. They very gratefully accepted & proceeded to plant their gardens but alas the novelty wore off after a few weeks & when the hard work came our would-be gardeners disappeared & we ended with a weed patch. Most folks think we are stupid for wasting our time planting a garden when there is just 3 of us. Guess who can cut their grocery bill in 1/2?

IIRC most allotments in the UK are still measured in the archaic unit of poles for some reason. I don't really understand this, because all my reference books say a pole is a unit of length. But according to this site (the first one I found on Google) apparently 1 pole in allotment terms is about 30 square yards, and a typical allotment in that suburb of London is about 5 poles.

Welcome to the forum, BTW.

Rods. poles and perches - I remember the terms from primary school.........but that was a year or two ago..........

Nev

Don't worry Nev, I remember chains, furlongs and pints and quarts!

I've just been looking at the very comprehensive conversion menu in Calc98 (a very nice calculator program). I think they must be talking about a square pole, which is just over 30 sq. yds. In some circles the 'square' seems to be dropped; I sometimes buy building sand from a merchant by the meter or yard, when in fact I am buying it by the cubic meter or yard.

It's interesting to see all the units you never even knew about, like a 'township' which is about 36 sq. miles, or things you didn't even know had units, like a Boltzmann Constant!.

well my allotment is about 80-90ft xabout20ft ish and that is a half plot the plots do vary on our site i pay 22pound a yr plus about a 5 pound for water,as some of you are aware i have had my allotment 3 weeks and about a third has been turned round dug and hoed and some leeks in which i scrounged but also i struck a deal with the council and got it rent free to april 06 and then first bill to pay by june 06 so another good deal struck by gunners lol

Our plots vary too and I wasn't sure of the size of my newly acquired plot. It turned out to have been measured by our predecessor who wrote on the shed door 15m x 18m, along with a diagram of the plot, so now we know. It seems a HUGE jungle to us right now and we've just managed to dig a 6' square bed for parsnips, carrots and beetroot to show willing, dunno if they'll grow this time of year in Kent but we'll try. Just how many poles that measurement represents I couldn't hazard a guess?

Lynda

I've been thinking about this. I reckon (though I could be wrong - not for the first time) that measuring land by the pole may be a relic of the old strip farming system of feudal times, where the peasants were allowed to grow stuff on long, narrow strips of land. Interesting to do the conversions and see that Lynda's 15 x 18m is almost exactly 3 x 3.5 poles (which is indeed big for an allotment, in my limited experience); Gunners' may actually be 1 x 5 poles, which seems quite a common size.

It's always struck me as odd that an acre is, if accurately measured, an odd shape; 4840 square yards is a square of a little under 70 yards per side. To measure it accurately, with whole numbers that seem to relate to each other, you end up with a long strip 22 yards by 220 yards. That is to say, one chain by one furlong.

Now, a pole is 5.5 yards, which may at first seem an odd length, but a chain is 22 yards, so equals 4 poles. Therefore an acre is 4 poles by 40 poles.

If the peasant's strip of land was always one pole wide, then a five (or ten or whatever) pole allotment of land would be easy to measure out. That would explain why the allotments around here are long and narrow.

It's also interesting to see that my dictionary says that the word 'furlong' derives from 'furrow', as in a plughed strip, and a bit of reading shows that a 'pole' was the stick a ploughman would use to drive the oxen with. Land measure, it seems, was all related to the plough.

Makes sense Stew!

Nev

According to Enfield council, where I rent my plot, a pole is 25m square. I pay £44 a year for 5 poles and a shed. I think that's quite a lot, that's London prices for you I suppose.

Ah, more confusion, then.

When they say 25m square, do they really mean 25m x 25m = 625 sq m? Or are they bowdlerising their units, and assuming that 25m sq is the same as 25 sq m (which it ain't)?

25 sq m is 5m x 5m, which is very nearly 5.5 yards x 5.5 yards, or 1 pole x 1 pole. I'd suggest they've fudged their measurements a bit to fit in with metrication. I bet if you actually measured it, you'd find that 5m was actually 5.5yds (a little over 1inch/25mm difference)

It seems quite common in some circles to omit the 'square' bit, so when they say 'a pole' they imply a square pole (maybe it also implies a running length of 1 pole width?). Similarly you can go to a builder's merchant and buy a metre of sand, when what you are really getting is a cubic metre.

our allotments are all different sizes and it is really quite arbitary. If we think they are too small we combine them and call them large. Alarge plot is £18 per year and a smallone is£16...so it's not a great difference....but really the plots vary enormously....and non are measured in poles. If we did measure them it would be in square metres

Just been rung by our local council clerk- I will hopefully be with allotment by April by his estimation- they are doing loads of work up there (apparently) and the standard size will be 15yards by 10yards, for -and I hope you are sitting down- £6 per year! whoopee!


Kind thoughts
Deb

That's what I call a bargain!

And April should be early enough in the year to get something growing this season - even if it's a bit weedy. Congratulations!

Muddypause wrote:Ah, more confusion, then.

When they say 25m square, do they really mean 25m x 25m = 625 sq m? Or are they bowdlerising their units, and assuming that 25m sq is the same as 25 sq m (which it ain't)?

25 sq m is 5m x 5m,

Thank god someone else knows that too - I've long known the difference and I live in metric land but nearly everyone from the UK says sq m when they should be saying m sq or m2!!!!!! Everything in France is stated in m2 (land, room sizes) e.g. when buying a house or land. The majority of British in France don't seem to get this. It's irritating!!

Sorry, just one of my little rants!