Could all my fellow allotment holders give me some idea how much they are paying for there allotments I have ten rod plot and my rent for 2007/2008
was £60. 72 pence and a further increase of 25 pence per metre for the year
2008 /2009.

In message , Billit
writes

Could all my fellow allotment holders give me some idea how much they
are paying for there allotments I have ten rod plot and my rent for
2007/2008
was £60. 72 pence and a further increase of 25 pence per metre for the
year
2008 /2009.


136.62 square metres (5.4 rods) for £16.39 here in Bletchley (just
changed administration so I'm not certain if this is for the year or 9
months as I can't remember what I paid last year), we also get mains
water on site and regular deliveries of manure for this.

Will
--
e-mail news dot will at lancre dot net
'98 300Tdi Defender 110 CSW, 1/12th NB Sometimes
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Billit wrote:
Could all my fellow allotment holders give me some idea how much they
are paying for there allotments I have ten rod plot and my rent for
2007/2008
was £60. 72 pence and a further increase of 25 pence per metre for the
year
2008 /2009.

10 rod plot (1/16 acre) in Worcester, £32 this year, £31 last year

http://www.worcester.gov.uk/index.php?id=1263

Tom

Tom wrote:

Billit wrote:
Could all my fellow allotment holders give me some idea how much they
are paying for there allotments I have ten rod plot and my rent for
2007/2008
was £60. 72 pence and a further increase of 25 pence per metre for the
year
2008 /2009.

10 rod plot (1/16 acre) in Worcester, £32 this year, £31 last year

http://www.worcester.gov.uk/index.php?id=1263

Mine's a half-plot (300sq yds) and last year I paid £8 in rent, and a
one-off payment of £6 in shares in the association.

Mind you, it's a private allotment association rather than council run,
which may make a difference.
--
Carol
"If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put
that thing in your mouth. Particularly if the thing is
cats." - Lemony Snicket _The Wide Window_

"Billit" wrote
Could all my fellow allotment holders give me some idea how much they
are paying for there allotments I have ten rod plot and my rent for
2007/2008
was £60. 72 pence and a further increase of 25 pence per metre for the
year
2008 /2009.


In Runnymede BC area for the full 10 Rods..
Full cost.... £84. paid by DD it reduces to £79
Over 60.... £42. paid by DD it reduces to £39.50

Mains water is laid on but hosepipes are banned permanently. No other
concessions.

I seem to remember Wandsworth in London was the most expensive, it was £100.
some years ago.
--
Regards
Bob Hobden

We are stunned here in Swinton (Manchester) we have been charged a 10 %
increase for no additional services -now
£ 38.50.

Jimbo ;o(

Incidentally forgive my naivety but how is a 'Rod' measured ?


"Bob Hobden" wrote in message
...

"Billit" wrote
Could all my fellow allotment holders give me some idea how much they
are paying for there allotments I have ten rod plot and my rent for
2007/2008
was £60. 72 pence and a further increase of 25 pence per metre for the
year
2008 /2009.


In Runnymede BC area for the full 10 Rods..
Full cost.... £84. paid by DD it reduces to £79
Over 60.... £42. paid by DD it reduces to £39.50

Mains water is laid on but hosepipes are banned permanently. No other
concessions.

I seem to remember Wandsworth in London was the most expensive, it was
£100. some years ago.
--
Regards
Bob Hobden

A long tape measure would do the trick. When they say their allotment is so many rods, they actually mean square rods. Allotments are probably the only thing that is still measured in square rods, though by law rents now have to be presented in square metres.

A rod, pole or perch is 5.5 yards or 16'6". This may seem odd, but it fits in with the imperial system of measures which has a factor of 11, ie 1760, the number of yards in a mile, is 160 times 11. There are 4 rods to a chain, 10 chains to a furlong and 8 furlongs to a mile, so 40 rods to the furlong and 320 rods to the mile. Railways are traditionally measured in chains. A chain (22 yards) is also the distance between the wickets on a cricket pitch.

An acre is the area of a plot 4 rods (a chain) wide by a furlong long, or 160 square rods. This comes from the days of ridge and furrow agriculture, where agricultural strips were traditionally 4 rods wide.

10 square rods seems to me to be a huge allotment, much bigger than most individual plots I see in allotment areas. In fact I think it is a bit bigger than my back garden. A nursery, now closed down, in Surrey told me that they were paying about £8,000 a year for their 1 hectare holding. That's 40 times as large as a 10 rod allotment. So if you are only paying £100 for a 10 rod allotment, that's only half the price of a commercial smallholding rent in the home counties. And I bet your allotment has plenty of unused land between the individual plots to provide access, that isn't charged for. Think yourself lucky.

"Jimbo" wrote
We are stunned here in Swinton (Manchester) we have been charged a 10 %
increase for no additional services -now
£ 38.50.

Jimbo ;o(

Incidentally forgive my naivety but how is a 'Rod' measured ?


That's so cheap.

A Rod is actually a linear measurement of 5.5 yards. They really mean Square
Rods when they talk about allotment measurement but in my experience most
Council folk don't understand it all.
So a Sq Rod is 5.5 yards by 5.5 yards or 30.25 sq yards. 10 rods is
therefore 302.5 sq yards.

Ours now talks in Metric Lettings(??) which is 5 metres by 5 metres. (so 250
sq metres)

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
17mls W. of London.UK

In article ,
says...
We are stunned here in Swinton (Manchester) we have been charged a 10 %
increase for no additional services -now
£ 38.50.

Jimbo ;o(

Incidentally forgive my naivety but how is a 'Rod' measured ?


Used to be quite literally with a measuring rod, it is equivalent to 16.5
feet, and sometimes refered to a pole, you will find large old buildings
like cathederals are often laid out in multiples of rods, for longer
lengths a chain was used
--
Charlie Pridham, Gardening in Cornwall
www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of national collections of Clematis viticella cultivars and
Lapageria rosea

Thanks for all the 'Rod' feedback gang - I shall wonder around the plot Rod
in hand (OO err sounds Rude !) measuring at the weekend !

Jim ;o)


"Martin" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 6 Feb 2008 16:45:36 -0000, Charlie Pridham

wrote:

In article ,
says...
We are stunned here in Swinton (Manchester) we have been charged a 10 %
increase for no additional services -now
£ 38.50.

Jimbo ;o(

Incidentally forgive my naivety but how is a 'Rod' measured ?


Used to be quite literally with a measuring rod, it is equivalent to 16.5
feet, and sometimes refered to a pole, you will find large old buildings
like cathederals are often laid out in multiples of rods, for longer
lengths a chain was used

100 links = 1 chain
10 chains = 1 furlong
8 furlongs = 1 mile
4 inches = 1 hand
22 yards = 1 chain
5.5 yards = 1 rod, pole or perch
4 poles = 1 chain
40 poles = 1 furlong

Area was measured in roods amongst other thing

1 furlong x 1 pole = 1 rood
40 (sq) poles = 1 rood
1210 square yards = 1 rood
1 furlong x 1 chain = 1 acre
4 roods = 1 acre
160 (sq) poles = 1 acre
4840 square yards = 1 acre
640 acres = 1 square mile

Thank Gawd for the metric system.
--

Martin

On 6/2/08 17:54, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:

On Wed, 6 Feb 2008 16:45:36 -0000, Charlie Pridham

wrote:

In article ,
says...
We are stunned here in Swinton (Manchester) we have been charged a 10 %
increase for no additional services -now
£ 38.50.

Jimbo ;o(

Incidentally forgive my naivety but how is a 'Rod' measured ?


Used to be quite literally with a measuring rod, it is equivalent to 16.5
feet, and sometimes refered to a pole, you will find large old buildings
like cathederals are often laid out in multiples of rods, for longer
lengths a chain was used

100 links = 1 chain
10 chains = 1 furlong
8 furlongs = 1 mile
4 inches = 1 hand
22 yards = 1 chain
5.5 yards = 1 rod, pole or perch
4 poles = 1 chain
40 poles = 1 furlong

Area was measured in roods amongst other thing

1 furlong x 1 pole = 1 rood
40 (sq) poles = 1 rood
1210 square yards = 1 rood
1 furlong x 1 chain = 1 acre
4 roods = 1 acre
160 (sq) poles = 1 acre
4840 square yards = 1 acre
640 acres = 1 square mile

Thank Gawd for the metric system.

But it's so bland, so boring. Thank God for Ye Olde English, if only
because it IS ours! I'm really intrigued that in house sale advertisements,
land is still measured in hectares in some cases.
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'

Sacha wrote:

On 6/2/08 17:54, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:
Thank Gawd for the metric system.

But it's so bland, so boring. Thank God for Ye Olde English, if only
because it IS ours!

Exactly. These things are deeply embedded in language. You can't, for
example, talk about Our Hero two-point-five centimetering his way along
the crumbling ledge. It just doesn't have the same ring.

Then, what would we call a piece of artillery so massive it takes two
men to load the shell? Eighty-pounder! Not only the glorious pun on
'pound' but the subtle echo of weighty mass in 'eighty'. Weighty
pounder. Pure Poetry. By contrast, bringing up the thirty-six
kilogrammer sounds more millinery than military.

And it's not just the lexicon, there's the actual physical expression.
Yard! What a wide-open, full man's stride of a word, roared from the
chest. 'Metre' is such a meek and tweety sort of concoction. No wonder
even the French themselves shorten and flatten the e. I think they've
been planning this since Waterloo.

"Martin" wrote ((huge snip))

Thank Gawd for the metric system.

Until you try to divide it by three!

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
17mls W. of London.UK

In article ,
lid says...
On Wed, 6 Feb 2008 16:45:36 -0000, Charlie Pridham
wrote:

In article ,
says...
We are stunned here in Swinton (Manchester) we have been charged a 10 %
increase for no additional services -now
£ 38.50.

Jimbo ;o(

Incidentally forgive my naivety but how is a 'Rod' measured ?


Used to be quite literally with a measuring rod, it is equivalent to 16.5
feet, and sometimes refered to a pole, you will find large old buildings
like cathederals are often laid out in multiples of rods, for longer
lengths a chain was used

100 links = 1 chain
10 chains = 1 furlong
8 furlongs = 1 mile
4 inches = 1 hand
22 yards = 1 chain
5.5 yards = 1 rod, pole or perch
4 poles = 1 chain
40 poles = 1 furlong

Area was measured in roods amongst other thing

1 furlong x 1 pole = 1 rood
40 (sq) poles = 1 rood
1210 square yards = 1 rood
1 furlong x 1 chain = 1 acre
4 roods = 1 acre
160 (sq) poles = 1 acre
4840 square yards = 1 acre
640 acres = 1 square mile

Thank Gawd for the metric system.

Doesn't work at sea though! chains, cables, fathams and nautical miles
all work exactly with the size of the earth, meters don't work at all and
french ships have a much harder job of trying to navigate in metres which
all has to be corrected and adjusted to fit :~)
--
Charlie Pridham, Gardening in Cornwall
www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of national collections of Clematis viticella cultivars and
Lapageria rosea

Well nautical miles are metric and have nothing to do with fathoms. And metres should have been good, but got buggered by the perverse use of an old Babylonian measurement of angle, the degree, with 90 to the right angle. (360 was a significant number in the Babylonian base 60/base 6 system).

A metre was originally defined in Napoleonic times as 1 ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the pole (ie 10,000 km from pole to equator). In fact they were ever so slightly out, it's actually about 10,002 km, (or 40,007km around a circumference through the poles). And because the earth isn't perfectly spherical, it's 40,047km around the equator.

It is the bizarre fact of measuring 90 degrees to the right angle that makes the metre a bit annoying, 111.11km to the degree, for navigation purposes. Of course the French tried to make this all work by doing angular measure not in Babylonian degrees but metric grads, also called grades, gradians or gons, which have 100 to the right angle. But sadly they didn't catch on for most purposes. They also put the zero meridian through Paris, but that didn't catch on either.

Nothing imperial about nautical miles. A nautical mile is traditionally 1 minute of latitude. To the nearest metre 1 minute of latitude is 1852m. The nautical mile is today DEFINED as 1852 metres. That's 1012.6859 fathoms. The nautical mile was never 1000 fathoms. The old British Admiralty definition of a nautical mile was 6080 feet, which had the convenience of being precisely 800 feet more than a statute mile, but is clearly not an exact number of yards or fathoms, so it doesn't fit well in the imperial system either. The precise length of a foot varied over time until it was standardised in 1959 (via 1 inch = 25.4mm precisely), and this made the admiralty nautical mile about 1m longer than a modern metric nautical mile.

NASA lost a spacecraft around Mars because someone did some calculations in imperial measurements and got them wrong. I'll stick to metric, thank you.

5m is only about 0.5% different from a rod. So 25m2 is a pretty good equivalent for a square rod, and makes the sums a lot easier.

A hectare is a piece of land 100m by 100m, very easy to visualise. 10,000m2 to the hectare. 100 hectares to the square km, which are those squares on the map, useful for visualising larger areas. Whenever anyone quotes acres to me I immediately convert to hectares or sq km using the 2.5 acres to a hectare approximation.

In much of the continent, it is automatic to describe the floor space of a property in m2. So you can immediately tell what sort of a size property it is. I wish we would do the same.