On the Ordnance Survey map a small red square with a tractor in it near Wing in Buckinghamshire indicating a working farm, with ‘Private’ in brackets! It is Creslow Field and Manor, and again in brackets, it is annotated ‘300 acres – Britain’s largest field’.

So what is an acre?

In the days when ploughing was done with oxen, the ploughman had a pole for driving the team that was 16½ feet long (5½ yards).

Four poles, 2 yards – became one chain, so named because it was a standard length and made of equal lengths of wire linked together. A chain is still often used for measuring the length of a cricket pitch.

Forty poles, or 10 chains – 220 yards – war called a furlong (from Furrow long).

So why did these measurements come about? The answer appears to be that a field 220 yards long and 22 yards wide was the amount an ox could plough in one day and was known as an ACRE. (4,840 square yards)

The 300-acre field can now be translated into 1,452,000 square yards, or just under ½ a square mile. Even better, a field with square sides of 1200 yard (if it is square, which is a big field.

Thought! Is ‘acre’ a corruption of ‘ache’ because by the time a ploughman had completed a field 22 yards long and 22 yards wide, pushing an oxen plough, he would have covered quite a distance. Perhaps when his wife asked him if he had had a good day she received a response, “My life that was an ‘acher’ today”!

WHAT IS AN ACRE?

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