Roods to Square Yards (rood to yd²)

1 rood equals 1,210 square yards exactly.

1 rood = 1,210 square yards

How to convert roods to square yards

To convert roods to square yards, multiply the number of roods by 1,210. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply square yards by 0.000826446281 (rounded).

square yards = roods × 1,210

Example: 10 roods = 12,100 square yards.

About these units

Rood (rood)

Medieval EnglishHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

A quarter of an acre (1,011.7 m²), 40 square rods. A medieval English land unit, the area of a furlong by a rod.

Old English rod meant a pole, and especially a cross, which is also why the word names the crucifix screens in medieval churches. As a land measure, the rood was the area of a strip one furlong long and one rod wide, which is the same as 40 square rods. That makes it a quarter of an acre, or 10,890 square feet, about 1,011.7 square meters. Its handiness for surveyors came from the simple fractions: four roods to an acre.

The medieval acre was imagined as a strip a furlong long and four rods wide, the ground a team of oxen could plough in a day, so the rood was the strip left when that width was cut into four. Records in England long gave land as acres, roods and perches, in that order. A separate and obsolete use of rood was as a length, with local values somewhere between about 16.5 and 24 feet. By the time the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled in 1914 that sense survived only locally. Normandy had a comparable unit called the vergee.

1 rood = 1,011.714106 square meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Rood (unit); Wikipedia: Acre; Wikipedia: Rod (unit)

Square Yard (yd²)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

9 square feet (0.8361 m²). Used for carpet, turf and land in the UK and India (where it is called a gaj).

Branches and rods lie behind this unit. The word yard comes from Old English gerd or gyrd, meaning a staff or measuring rod, and it first appears in the late seventh-century laws of Ine of Wessex, where a yard of land was a tax unit. Where its length came from is uncertain: pacing, the cubit and the arm of King Henry I have all been suggested. A square yard is simply a square of that length on each side.

After the 1959 agreement among six countries fixed the yard at exactly 0.9144 meter, the square yard became exactly 9 square feet, 1,296 square inches or about 0.836 m². It is used across the English-speaking world, notably in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India and Pakistan. In northern India it is called a gaj, and in Pakistan a gaz, and house plots there are often quoted in it. In the US and UK the yard, divided into eighths, is also how cloth is bought, so the square yard suits flooring and fabric in the same breath.

1 square yard = 0.83612736 square meters (exactly).

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

Related conversions

See all area units.