Poles and other archaic measurements

At present all plots on the site are let, but each year a few become vacant and are offered to people on our waiting list.

While we don’t want to discourage anyone from applying for an allotment, before you do so it is important to appreciate how much work is involved in getting a plot into good order and then maintaining it. A traditional standard plot has an area of 10 poles, which in modern units is 250m², that is 50m x 5m or 25m x 10m. At the height of the growing season in the summer, this could easily require the equivalent of one full day a week, depending on the kind of crops grown. Our plots are mostly between 5 and 10 poles in area, so if you are thinking of applying to go on the waiting list, you need to decide how much time you can realistically give to an allotment.

The terms of our lease require us to give preference to residents of Barnet. In practice, this means that we would normally only offer plots to residents of another borough if there is nobody from Barnet on the waiting list. In recent years, Barnet people have had to wait typically two or three years for a suitable plot to become vacant. However, those who live outside the borough may also apply but might have to wait several years.

There are around 40 other allotment sites in Barnet, some of which might have shorter waiting lists. If you are interested in the possibility of applying to one of them, you can find out more about them here.

The traditional unit for the measurement of areas of allotments is the pole, or sometimes the rod or the perch. They are identical but the one used in allotment legislation is the pole. While the use of these archaic units can be confusing, what is even more confusing is that while these are units of area, there are units of length with the same names. So strictly speaking a pole when used to describe an area is a square pole, but it is rarely described as such; to decide whether lengths or areas are being described you need to know the context.

A length of one pole is 5.5 yards. The length of a cricket pitch is a chain, which is 4 poles, while a furlong is 40 poles.

An area of one pole is that of a square whose sides have a length of one pole, that is 5.5 yd by 5.5 yd or 30.25 sq yd.

An area one chain in width and one furlong in length is an acre, which was approximately the amount of land that in the Middle Ages could be ploughed by a man and an ox in a day. The rod was the ox-goad the ploughman used to control his team, and to reach his leading pair it had to be sixteen and a half feet long, five and a half yards.

The traditional standard allotment plot has an area of 10 poles and allotment legislation considers that 40 poles is sufficient to feed a family.

If you prefer to live in the metric world, then 1 pole is a wee bit over 25m², so a standard plot has an area of about 250m².  It is believed that the law now requires us to live in this world. In particular, although we can describe the area of our plots as being so many poles, we should quote rents and charges in pounds per square metre. So those shown on our rents and charges page, are now given in both.

For further reading about archaic measurements, there is plenty on the Internet, for example here.