Thank you very much to everyone who responded; I found the previosu threads very useful, and Darran's calculation nased on something I am familiar with, namely Domesday England were evry helpful indeed. My Wintertop village is going to be loosely based on Pictish land settlement patterns i think, but a village of 600 souls can be supported by as little as 30 square miles of rough terrian from what I can see, so I will fudge it to that as that fits the map well. DArran's calculations on the size of steads are excellent; Berkshire is a little flat, but the Sussex downs I believe were not disimilar in terms of settlement patterns. I will grab my Penguin edition of the Domesday Book later and see if it covers any Northern Britih areas like the Pennines - I can't recall off hand...
Thanks so much to everyone who replied! :)
cj x
>
> Notes on some stead sizes:
>
> The Berkshire Doomsday Book entry states:
> 'If the king sent an army anywhere, one soldier went from five
> *hides*, each
> hide providing four shillings towards his wages and subsistence for
> two
> months.'
>
> Although written later this may show how the Anglo-Saxon fyrd was
> recruited
> and paid for. A *hide* is an administrative term for the amount of
> land
> considered necessary to support one man and his family. In actuality
> the
> exact size of a hide was not fixed as different terrain and soil
> types would
> affect the amount of produce. In Berkshire a hide was measured as
> about
> forty acres.
> The men living in five hides had to club together to equip and pay
> for one
> of their number to go on campaign. A *hundred* is formed by recuiting
> men
> from twenty units of five-hides, giving twenty warriors equiped and
> supplied
> for a summer campaign.
> The Vikings used a similar system, one hundred and fifty *carucates*
> having
> an obligation to provide and raise thirty men.
> A capitulary of Charlemagne c.807 A.D. state: 'Each freeman who seems
> to
> hold five *mansi* shall likewise come to the army.' A mansi being the
> equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon hide.
>
> If we take that sixteen carls and their families live and work a
> stead, a
> stead will have sixteen hides as its cultivated lands. With forty
> acres per
> hide that is 640 acres per stead.
> One acre equals 4046.9m2 so a steads holding will be 2590016 square
> metres
> is 2.5 square km, or a little over one square mile.
>
> That also means that three warriors from that stead can be sent out
> on fire
> season campaigns and raids (1 warrior per five-hides). These wariors
> will be
> equiped and supplied to be away from their homelands for the majority
> of the
> season. The rest of the carls would fight and protect their lands
> should a
> raid or attack happen.
>
>
> Cheers,
> DARRAN SIMS
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