street running north from the River Aire. These burgesses had to be freemen: those who were entitled to practise a trade within the town and to participate in electing members of the town's ruling council. In the very earliest chartered foundations, predating the Norman Conquest, the burgage plots were simply the ploughland strips of pre-existing agrarian settlements. In towns like Burford in Oxfordshire and Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, Bromyard in Herefordshire, and Cricklade in Wiltshire, the property on the road frontage extends in a very long garden plot behind the dwelling even today, as English property boundaries have remained very stable. In South Zeal, in Devon, burgage plots were known as "borough acres". The basic unit of measurement was the perch which was and the plots can be identified today because they are in multiples of perches: at Cricklade most were 2 by 12 perches (10.1 by 60.4 m), while at Charmouth in Dorset, a charter of the year 1320 provided plots 4 perches wide and 20 perches long (about 20 by 100 m), giving a typical plot size of half an acre (0.2 hectare), held at an annual rent of 6d. Burgage grants were also common in Ireland; for example, when the town of Wexford received its royal charter in 1418, English settlers were encouraged into the town and were given burgage plots at a rent of one shilling per year. The term was translated into Irish as , and the element "Borris" survives in many Irish place names. See also History of English land law Land tenure Grid plan References Medieval English Towns - Glossary The Local Historian's Encyclopedia by John Richardson - Further reading T.R. Slater, The Analysis of Burgage Patterns in Medieval Towns, Area, Vol. 13, no. 3, 1981 External links Wiltshire County Council: Burgage plots Discovering Leeds: Briggate History of agriculture in the United Kingdom Feudalism in the British Isles Real estate in the United Kingdom Local government in England Land tenure