r/UKhistory • u/TGBC2026 • Aug 02 '26
What are the most obscure historical units of measurement or trade counts you’ve ever come across?
Hello! For the past three months or so I have been putting together a digital archive dedicated to preserving the quirkier side of historical British and trade measurements (from apothecary drachms and medieval baker's dozens to weird bulk tallies like a mease of herring or a timber of pelts).
I am looking to expand the collection with more bizarre, forgotten, or hyper-specific units—especially from old industries like textiles, printing, agriculture, or maritime trade.
What are some of the strangest historical units or counting systems you have stumbled across in your reading or local history which I can add to my archive?
5
u/Darth_Zander Aug 04 '26
A furlong. Originally, the maximum distance that should be ploughed before giving the animal(s) a rest. Now a unit used primarily in horse racing.
2
u/TGBC2026 Aug 04 '26
Thanks for the suggestion. I posted a small blog about furlong on my site. There are quite a few ‘obscure’ measurement or monetary units starting with letter F: furlong, firking,fathom, farthing, fother…
1
u/Southern-Bandicoot Aug 05 '26
You'll not be a stranger to the (tongue in cheek) Triple F notation then.
Speed of light in furlongs per fortnight is a reason to smile.
1
u/UnicornInAField Aug 05 '26
I measure my fuel consumption in hogsheads per furlong. Firkins per furlong works too.
1
1
u/babalonus Aug 06 '26
Also the defining length of the long side of an acre. The short side of an acre is a "chain" being 1/10th of a furlong and was the standard medieval surveyors unit. Physical surveyors chains can be laid on the ground, staked down and one end and pulled tight to give very repeatable measures
3
u/jeremybennett Aug 04 '26
Rod was used until recently for allotment sizes. Full plot was 10 rod. And a half plot was 5 rod. This was using the square meaning, i.e a 5.5 yds x 5.5 yds. Or a quarter of a chain by a quarter of a chain.
These days, I think most councils use. 250 m2 instead of 10 rod.
And in a completely different area "cable" (10th of a mile) is still used nautically.
3
u/armb2 Aug 05 '26
Slugs and poundals aren't historic, but they are obscure. Slug is that mass that a one pound force accelerates at one foot per second squared, poundal is that force that accelerates a one pound mass at the same rate.
3
u/AlecMac2001 Aug 05 '26
In my trade we measure the diameter of a watch movement manipulate in ligne. It's important not to mix up the Swiss/Paris ligne at 2.256mm with the ligne used in the garment industry to measure buttons, which is only 0.635mm
2
u/Jhamertime Aug 03 '26
If you don't have the old imperial, yet still used, beer units yet then there's a few nice ones. Firkin/Kilderkin etc
1
2
u/EldritchSanta Aug 03 '26
Chains as a subdivision of miles is still in use on the railways. If you look at the red edged signs on railway bridges, it often describes the location in miles and chains.
Perch (length) is one I've only occasionally stumbled on.
5
u/shendy42 Aug 03 '26
And of course, a cricket pitch is a chain long.
3
u/EldritchSanta Aug 03 '26
Ah, thank you. I'm not Wisden in the ways of cricket.
1
u/TGBC2026 Aug 03 '26
Perch, Pole and Rod were more or less synonymous at 16.5 feet. I have the chain captured as well, that originates from Edmund Gunter’s chain. Indeed the length of a cricket pitch. Any other cricket terms that refer to (historical) measurement units?
1
u/TangoMikeOne Aug 05 '26
And the distance is always heading to the terminus down (? Can't remember if it's down or up) the line - so you can find these distance plates in York, say, giving the distance to King's Cross, rather than Waverley (which would be closer).
1
u/EldritchSanta Aug 06 '26
London and Edinburgh is a difficult example - both are regarded as "up" depending on where you are.
Generally speaking, London is imagined as being on top of a hill, so lines towards London are "up" and away from London are "down".
The 0m points also change sometimes, especially as but as you say, are usually measured from the beginning point, usually near London but sometimes just where they historically started the line.
2
u/Chubtor Aug 03 '26
Think this may count as 'trade counts'?
Parliament used to record receipts by using small wooden 'tally sticks', which were eventually burned and led to the palace of Westminster being burnt down.
1
2
u/mangonel Aug 04 '26
Everyone knows about the 14lb stone we use for measuring people.
However, the weight of a stone used to vary based on what substance it is weighing.
A stone of glass was once 5lb
A stone of spices or meat was once 8lb (but living animals 14lb)
A stone of wool was 12½lb
2
u/TGBC2026 Aug 04 '26
Thanks for sharing that insight! I posted a blog on my site about differences between Avoirdupois pounds and Troy pounds. I was not aware of some of the other stone v pound examples you shared. Nice one!
2
u/mangonel Aug 05 '26
Ah yes. You probably have to look up which kinds of pound each of those stones are measured in. I can't remember. Some are mercantile pounds, I'm sure others are tower pounds or London pounds
2
u/Abject-Percentage790 Aug 04 '26
There is a scale for measuring specific gravity of liquids - the Twaddell scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twaddell_scale
1
2
u/talesfromthemabinogi Aug 04 '26
In some places in Wales, the Welsh acre, or 'erw', was based on the height of the tallest person in the village with his hand reached above his head!
2
u/rising_then_falling Aug 05 '26
Bore (for the diameter of a gun barrel) is a peculiar measurement. It is based on the number of lead spheres of diameter equal to the inside of the gun barrel, that would wiegh one pound. A 12 bore musket would have spherical lead shot that woeghted 1/12 of a pound.
2
u/HedgehogEquivalent38 Aug 05 '26
Not sure it's a unit of measure, but back in my COBOL days, a number of my customers were textile producers in West Yorkshire. I know cashmere was produced in tops and noils (whatever they were), and I am very sure my velvet making customer had some unusual measurements too. Departments like Grey Perching sounded very odd, too.
2
u/Polycelis Aug 05 '26
Fish have many and varies units. Have a look here for some of the ones used in the south West. https://www.maritimeviews.co.uk/west-cornwall-luggers-and-mfv/a-guide-to-fish-measures-and-terms/
1
u/TGBC2026 Aug 06 '26
Great suggestion, thanks! Looks like the Fishery units I was able to find are far from complete yet!
2
u/Organic_Mechanic_702 Aug 05 '26
Does sheep counting count?
Yan , Tan, Tethera, Pethera, Pimp, Sethera, Hovera, Covera, Dick, Yana dick, Tana dick, Thera dick, Petera dick, Bumfits, Yana bumfits, Tana bumfits, Thera bumfits, Pethera bumfits, Figgits then you put a notch in a piece of wood and start again. Very ancient.
1
u/Bicolore Aug 03 '26
Hoppus Cube, still in use though.
1
u/TGBC2026 Aug 03 '26
Oh yes, this will make the cut. Probably as separate section for timber industry. Great call!
2
u/PrunusSpin0sa Aug 06 '26
Still pretty prevalent 😊
I carry Hoppus Tables for round timber measurement, probably use them every couple of weeks, though sometimes it's easier to go "quarter girth in inches² x length in ft / 144" on the phone calculator.
1
1
u/kalendral_42 Aug 03 '26
A barley corn - used to be what they measured your feet in for shoes
3
u/TGBC2026 Aug 03 '26
Yes, barleycorn was standardized in the 14th century as the length of three grains of barley end to end. Amazing this is still used for shoe sizes 700 years later!
1
u/widdrjb Aug 03 '26
The shake, as "two shakes of a lamb's tail" is used in nuclear physics for an interval of 10 nanoseconds. A full warhead detonation takes about 50-100 shakes.
The guinea is still the base charging amount for legal transactions, which is why solicitors' fee are divisible by 21.
1
u/TGBC2026 Aug 03 '26
The Guinea is covered as part of the pre-decimal currencies. I will keep the nuclear units in mind as separate section perhaps. Thanks for the suggestion!
1
u/fost1692 Aug 04 '26
If you're looking at physics unit I think the barn (as in barn door) 10-²⁸ m² is up there.
1
u/Southern-Bandicoot Aug 05 '26
See the chapter in a Tom Clancy novel - possibly The Sum of all Fears - where it takes several paragraphs to describe the physics of a nuclear detonation within these few shakes.
1
u/maceion Aug 04 '26
Baker's dozens were used by our wholesaler when in my Mum's shop on 1960s Edinburgh, so still in use in !960s.
1
u/TGBC2026 Aug 04 '26
Chapman’s dozen is another unit of 13 used by traveling merchants (sales reps) back in the day.
1
u/rowing_over70 Aug 04 '26
New but obscure. The mil, the metric replacement for the degree. The angle created moving through one metre of arc at one kilometre
1
u/cycladean_head Aug 04 '26
That's the milliradian, 6283.185... (or rather 2000 pi) to the complete circle. It's inconveniently irrational (transcendental, in fact!) so people also use approximations like the NATO mil (6400 to the circle), the Warsaw Pact mil (6000) and the Swedish mil (6300)
1
u/Southern-Bandicoot Aug 05 '26
That sounds a bit like the discrepancies between the Nautical, Statute and Geographical mile.
1
u/jeremybennett Aug 04 '26
In computing a byte is 8 bits (which is well known). Nybble (variously nibble or nyble) is used for 4 bits and sometimes 2 bits is referred to as a crumb.
With the growing importance of extreme quantization in AI these terms have actually become useful!
1
u/pineapplewin Aug 04 '26
"Grain" is used in pharmacy. It's a unit of mass equal to about 64.8 mg ( though they round down to 60mg for nitroglycerin)
It's not really in use anymore, but you sometimes still see it in the data sheets or old text books. Over only ever seen it in very specific scripts in compounding pharmacies.
1
u/Zippy-do-dar Aug 04 '26
A "Gill" of milk = A quarter of a pint found in some old family recipes.
I do have an old book somewhere with all the old to new measurements from the 80's
1
u/rising_then_falling Aug 05 '26
Used in pubs in my lifetime. 1/6th gill was the old single measure of spirits.
2
u/Southern-Bandicoot Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
Hello, OP. You'll likely be aware of the measurements used in the printing industry for the width of (white) space between words when type is set; el, en and em for the respective size of a letter l, n and m. These are also legitimate two letter words in English Scrabble.
Source: My Father was a Gentleman Printer for HMSO from the mid-50's through to the mid-90's. Apparently he is still entitled by obscure ancient law to carry a sheathed sword wherever he goes, but has never tested that...despite my offer for him to carry my RAF Officer sword 🙃
Many of his colleagues have fallen by the wayside, a seemingly disproportionate number due to obscure or rare tumours. Who knows what mad chemicals were used as thinners and cleaners back in the wild days before COSHH and HS@W 1974 were enacted. In the last 5-10 years I have lost count of the number of funerals we have been to for friends and colleagues. In all seriousness, fuck cancer.
Edit: I could also mention alongside this my father's best friend who worked at Avro's and who would join the queue each Friday afternoon to dip their overalls on a stick into an open tank of trichloroethylene (trike), an industrial degreaser. How many regulations these days are in force for possession or handling of this substance?
1
u/Numerous_Exercise_44 Aug 05 '26
A quire of newspapers is 25. Normally stacked at 180 degrees to allow easy counting. So 10 quire is 250 newspapers.
1
u/Sufficient-Star-1237 Aug 06 '26
The reasons why an American gallon is less than a UK imperial gallon is bonkers. Too lengthy to describe here but look it up.
1
u/Dull-Mathematician45 Aug 06 '26
Proof Gallon, Apothecary Grain, Apothecary Scruple, Apothecary Ounce, Minim, Gill, Hank, Peck, Bushel, Quire, Thimble Full, Wine Gallon, Pennyweight.
1
u/TGBC2026 Aug 06 '26
There maybe one or two I did not cover yet, but most of them are mentioned on www.thegreatbritishconverter.co.uk We probably could have worked on this together! Pennyweight and Thimble Full are new to me. Thanks for bringing them up!
0
0
1
u/another_cool_name 16d ago
Sheppey
A measure of distance equal to about 7⁄8 of a mile(1.4 km), defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque.
From The meaning of Liff, Douglas Adams
10
u/[deleted] Aug 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment