Oxgangs to Acres (oxgang to ac)

1 oxgang equals 15 acres exactly.

1 oxgang = 15 acres

How to convert oxgangs to acres

To convert oxgangs to acres, multiply the number of oxgangs by 15. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply acres by 0.06666666667 (rounded).

acres = oxgangs × 15

Example: 10 oxgangs = 150 acres.

Approximate value. Standards for the oxgang varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Oxgang (oxgang)

Medieval EnglishHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)Approximate value

About 15 acres, an eighth of a hide: the area an ox could plow in a season. Actual sizes varied by region.

Oxgang means the land an ox could go over, from Old English oxangang. Its Latin twin, bovata or bovate, comes from the word for ox, and a peasant holding one was called an oxganger or bovater. The unit belonged mainly to the Danelaw, the part of England settled by Vikings, where Domesday Book records it in Latin as bovata.

Eight oxgangs made a carucate, the ploughland of a full eight-ox team, so two oxgangs equalled a virgate. Wikipedia gives an English average of about 15 acres, and says elsewhere that it could be as little as 15 and averaged roughly 20, depending on soil and local custom. The figure used here is 15 acres, close to 60,700 square meters.

Scotland kept a parallel system in which eight oxgangs formed a ploughgate. The word survives in place names such as Oxgangs, a suburb of Edinburgh, and Oxgang in Kirkintilloch.

1 oxgang = 60,702.84634 square meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Oxgang; Wikipedia: Carucate; Domesday Book Online: Glossary

Acre (ac)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

43,560 square feet or exactly 4,046.8564224 m², about 40% of a hectare. Originally the area a yoke of oxen could plow in a day.

Ploughland gave the acre its name: it traces to Old Norse akr, meaning cultivated land, and is related to German Acker and Latin ager. In medieval England it was a farming measure, the land one man with a team of eight oxen could plough in a day. The traditional strip was 40 perches long and 4 perches wide, which is 660 by 66 feet, or ten square chains. The shape was never the point, and the article on the unit stresses that any area of 43,560 square feet is an acre.

An acre is 43,560 square feet, 4,840 square yards or 1/640 of a square mile, close to 0.4 hectare. For Americans, it is roughly 88 by 55 yards, about 90 percent of a football field without the end zones. The Weights and Measures Act 1878 fixed it at 4,840 square yards in Britain, where trade use ended in 1995. The 1959 international acre is exactly 4,046.8564224 m²; the US survey acre, about 4,046.872 m², differed slightly, and US survey units were retired after 2022.

1 acre = 4,046.856422 square meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Acre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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