Oxgangs to Square Feet (oxgang to ft²)

1 oxgang equals 653,400 square feet exactly.

1 oxgang = 653,400 square feet

How to convert oxgangs to square feet

To convert oxgangs to square feet, multiply the number of oxgangs by 653,400. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply square feet by 0.000001530456076 (rounded).

square feet = oxgangs × 653,400

Example: 10 oxgangs = 6,534,000 square feet.

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

Square Foot (ft²)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

Exactly 0.09290304 m². The standard unit for floor areas and real estate in the US, UK and India.

Feet came first, and they were not all the same length. As a body-based unit, the foot ranged historically between about 250 and 335 millimeters, with ancient Greek and Roman feet near 300 mm. In medieval England a statute foot was set at 10/11 of an older Belgic foot, and Charlemagne's attempt around 790 to standardize units largely failed. The square foot is simply that length squared, so its size changed along with the foot.

The 1959 international agreement fixed the foot at exactly 0.3048 meter, so one square foot is exactly 0.09290304 m², or 144 square inches. The United Kingdom adopted the new foot in 1964. Today the square foot is the usual way of listing property in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Singapore and Hong Kong, although the measuring convention varies: agents may measure corner to corner, subtract unheated space, or add heated space that extends beyond the end-to-end measurement. The world's smallest park has been reported at 2.6 sq ft.

1 square foot = 0.09290304 square meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Square foot; Wikipedia: Foot (unit); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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