Editing Rod (unit) (section)

===In Britain and Ireland===
[[File:Gortavaura - geograph.org.uk - 1258792.jpg|thumb|Land for sale in Gortavaura, [[County Galway]], Ireland: the area is 48 acres, 3 [[rood (unit)|roods]] and 29 perches. In metric units, this is 19.8 [[hectares]].]]
In England, the rod or perch was first defined in law by the [[Composition of Yards and Perches]], one of the [[statutes of uncertain date]] from the late 13th to early 14th centuries: ''tres pedes faciunt ulnam, quinque ulne & dimidia faciunt perticam'' (three feet make a yard, five and a half yards make a perch).<ref>{{cite book |title=The statutes at large |location=London |publisher=Charles Eyre & [[Andrew Strahan]] |year=1794 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cKQ3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA400 |page=200 |language=la}}</ref>

The length of the chain was standardized in 1620 by [[Edmund Gunter]] at exactly four rods.<ref name=Taylor/><ref name=Russell/> Fields were measured in acres, which were one chain (four rods) by one furlong (in the United Kingdom, ten chains).<ref name="dict-acre"/>

Bars of metal one rod long were used as standards of length when surveying land. The rod was still in use as a common unit of measurement in the mid-19th century, when [[Henry David Thoreau]] used it frequently when describing distances in his work, ''[[Walden]]''.<ref name="Thoreau1899"/>

In traditional [[Scottish units]], a ''Scottish rood'' (''ruid'' in [[Scots language|Lowland Scots]], ''ròd'' in [[Scottish Gaelic]]), also ''[[fall (Scots)|fall]]'' measures 222 inches (6 [[ell]]s).<ref>{{cite web |url=https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/fall_n_1 |title="fall, faw" |website=Dictionary of the Scottish Language – [[Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue]]}}</ref>