AGRICULTURE AND LIVING SPACE ---------------------------- 2/8/01 From bradds@concentric.net (Bradd W. Szonye): A couple of corrections and additions. Bradd W. Szonye wrote: >The vingate is the amount of land required to support a family... This is called a "virgate," not "vingate." Mea culpa. >I'm not sure what the hide represents... One source I just found says that the hide is the amount of land that a single ploughman can cultivate. However, the usual estimate of 120 acres seems like a lot of land for one man to tend, and the same source claims that the *hide* is the amount of land required for a single family, which also sounds wrong. (You can support about 150-200 people on a square mile of good farmland, which corresponds to the estimate of 5 acres per person, or one virgate per family.) Therefore, I still don't know what the hide represents. Also, many sources claim that a virgate is 30 acres and that a hide is 4 virgates, but the actual numbers vary from location to location. The English village, Elton, studied in /Life in a Medieval Village/, for example, set the virgate at 24 acres and the hide at 6 virgates. Either is roughly the same amount of land, and should be good enough for drawing your maps. >Each family generally owns a home ranging in size from a 10 x 20 foot >cottage to a 15 x 50 foot longhouse. I forgot to mention that many homes and other buildings don't face the street squarely. Crooked rows of houses are quite common, and some of them don't face the street at all. Finally, I wanted to mention taverns, while I'm thinking of it. Some taverns are permanent, but it's much more common for individuals to host a "tavern" out of their homes after brewing a batch of beer or ale. Thus, a medieval "tavern" is much more like a block party than it is an established pub. Gies & Gies state that a silver penny (corresponding to the D&D silver piece) is a typical price for three gallons of home brewed beer. (Your typical peasant or other unskilled laborer earns about a penny a day.) 2/8/01 From bradds@concentric.net (Bradd W. Szonye): A couple of corrections and additions. Bradd W. Szonye wrote: >The vingate is the amount of land required to support a family... This is called a "virgate," not "vingate." Mea culpa. >I'm not sure what the hide represents... One source I just found says that the hide is the amount of land that a single ploughman can cultivate. However, the usual estimate of 120 acres seems like a lot of land for one man to tend, and the same source claims that the *hide* is the amount of land required for a single family, which also sounds wrong. (You can support about 150-200 people on a square mile of good farmland, which corresponds to the estimate of 5 acres per person, or one virgate per family.) Therefore, I still don't know what the hide represents. Also, many sources claim that a virgate is 30 acres and that a hide is 4 virgates, but the actual numbers vary from location to location. The English village, Elton, studied in /Life in a Medieval Village/, for example, set the virgate at 24 acres and the hide at 6 virgates. Either is roughly the same amount of land, and should be good enough for drawing your maps. >Each family generally owns a home ranging in size from a 10 x 20 foot >cottage to a 15 x 50 foot longhouse. I forgot to mention that many homes and other buildings don't face the street squarely. Crooked rows of houses are quite common, and some of them don't face the street at all. Finally, I wanted to mention taverns, while I'm thinking of it. Some taverns are permanent, but it's much more common for individuals to host a "tavern" out of their homes after brewing a batch of beer or ale. Thus, a medieval "tavern" is much more like a block party than it is an established pub. Gies & Gies state that a silver penny (corresponding to the D&D silver piece) is a typical price for three gallons of home brewed beer. (Your typical peasant or other unskilled laborer earns about a penny a day.) 2/8/01 From bradds@concentric.net (Bradd W. Szonye): Bradd W. Szonye wrote: >>I'm not sure what the hide represents... > >One source I just found says that the hide is the amount of land that a >single ploughman can cultivate. Okay, I realize that it's *really* bad form for me to followup to my own followup of my own post, but I think I've figured this one out. A hide does indeed seem to be related to the amount of land that an eight-ox plough can cover. Also, you can divide each virgate into two bovates (ie., like "bovine," a cow); a bovate is 1/8th of a hide, and thus you need one ox per bovate to till the fields. If a family holds a virgate, then that family needs to contribute two oxen to the plough. Now, only some places measured land according to ploughs and oxen, but that does seem to be the origin of the "hide." In summary: hide: about 120 acres; the amount of land an 8-oxen plough can cover virgate: about 30 acres; the amount of land needed to feed a family of 5 bovate: about 15 acres; you need about one ox per bovate acre: a single field, about 1/8 mile (a furlong) long by 1/80 mile wide 2/28/01 From Peter Newman How much does a bushel of wheat usually weigh? In 3rd ed 1 lb of wheat weighs 1 CP. If we say that in our fantasy game world good land will yield 15 bushels per acre and that 20% of this (3 bushels) must be held back for next years crop then a field which can yield two crops per year will produce 24 bushels x ? lbs/bushel x 1 CP per pound in revenue (less labor costs). If we then decide what sort of annual rate of return this society can produce we can than determine land values, in CP per acre. (Naturally we'll have to reduce yield per year by one third if we use a three field system and one half if we use a two field system to account for nonproductive use or nonuse of the land). 2/28/01 Brett Evill You're about to discover that the price ratios between various commodities inteh D&D price lists are badly out of whack. In the real Middle Ages a quarter (16 bushels) of wheat cost about thirty times the daily wage for unskilled labour. 2/28/01 Peter Newman What's wrong with that? Sixteen bushels of wheat can keep you fed for a year or so, why shouldn't it cost at least a months wages? When I ran a search on wheat I could not find out how much it weighed. Average wages are 1 SP per day and poor meals are 1 SP per day but wheat is 1 CP per pound. It seems to me that an average person would do a lot better if they simply bought wheat and added water to make gruel and sprouted a bit of it to make sprouts. If they borrowed a bit of sourdough starter they could make sourdough gruel. Sourdough gruel, sprouts, and rose hips should make an adequate diet. Why on earth would you spend a whole silver a day on food when 1 lb of wheat is only 1 CP? Just leave out that expensive (2 CP per 0.5 lb or 4 CP a lb) bread out of your diet and stick to gruel. If you want you could even cook it, after all 20 lb. of firewood is 1 CP, so you can afford it with what you save by not buying bread. 2/28/01 Brett Evill > > You're about to discover that the price ratios between various > > commodities inteh D&D price lists are badly out of whack. In the real > > Middle Ages a quarter (16 bushels) I hate mediaeval measures. A quarter is not 16 bushels, it is 8 bushels. Except at Windsor, where it is 9 bushels. Sorry. > > of wheat cost about thirty times the > > daily wage for unskilled labour. > > What's wrong with that? Sixteen bushels of wheat can keep you > fed for a year or so, why shouldn't it cost at least a months > wages? There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. That is the price that pertained in the Late Middle Ages, and they got on okay. But a quarter of wheat (8 bushels, 64 gallons, 512 pints) is going to weigh on the close order of 500 lb. So you ought to get about 16 lb of wheat for a day's wages. In D&D, with a day's wages standing at 1 sp and an lb of wheat costing 1 cp, worker's are considerably worse off, and there may be some doubt that they could support their families. It depends, of course on the costs of other necessities, so it's very difficult to calculate. But be aware that if you try to calculate the rent (value) of land from the price of wheat, the wage rate, and an assumed yield, you might get funny numbers considering that the price ratio of wheat to labour is rather high in the D&D price lists.