New Year, new project. My father put his name down for an allotment a year or two back and a few weeks before Christmas the council got in touch to say a plot had become available. I've suggested a division of labour whereby he does all the digging and I'll lounge in a deckchair reading the paper.
 He seems to think otherwise so we made a start after Boxing Day and I got things underway by digging a bed over. It looks like no-one has worked it for a while because it's overgrown with coarse grasses, though there are some fruit bushes which have buds on already which is a bonus.
 We were intrigued that the contract states that the size of the allotment is "5 poles or thereabouts". We did some research and it seems that a pole (sometimes called a rod or a perch) is a measurement originating in Anglo-Saxon times. It is generally understood to be a linear measurement of 5 and a 1/2 yards. In the case of an allotment it is a square pole so to speak.
 Allotments became widespread during the 19th. century as masses of people moved from the countryside to towns and cities with the advent of industrialisation creating food shortages. It was reckoned that the standard size allotment of 10 poles was sufficient to feed a family so in effect my father's is half of an allotment.
 I wonder if there is any other system of measurement so archaic that is still used to this day?

 Postscript. And in answer to that question: a furlong. This suggestion was made to me in a pub, that forum where so many important matters are discussed.
 Having looked it up I can confirm that a furlong is equivalent to 660 feet, 220 yards, 40 poles or 10 chains. The "Composition of Yards and Perches" is the first legal statute in England on such matters dating back to the late 13th. or early 14th. century. The furlong originally derived from an Anglo-Saxon measurement of the length of a plowed furrow.
 Many of our units of measurement have ancient roots then but the pole/rod/perch seems to have fallen into disuse apart from defining the size of allotments!