The Anglo-Saxon hide commonly appeared as 120 acres (49 hectares)[a] of arable land, but it probably represented a much smaller holding before 1066.
The hide's method of calculation is now obscure: different properties with the same hidage could vary greatly in extent even in the same county.
Other documents of the period show the same equivalence and it is clear that the word hide originally signified land sufficient for the support of a peasant and his household[2] or of a 'family', which may have had an extended meaning.
[5] Hides of land formed the basis for tax levies used to equip free warriors (miles) of the Holy Roman Empire.
In 807 it was specified that in the region west of the Seine, for example, a vassal who held four or five hides was responsible for showing up to a muster in person, fully equipped for war.
[6] In early Anglo-Saxon England, the hide was used as the basis for assessing the amount of food rent (known as feorm) due from a village or estate and it became the unit on which all public obligations were assessed, including in particular the maintenance and repair of bridges and fortifications and the provision of troops for manning the defences of a town or for the defence force known as the 'fyrd'.
"[10] Many details of the development of the system during the 350 years which elapsed between the time of Bede and the Domesday Book remain obscure.
According to Sir Frank Stenton, "Despite the work of many great scholars the hide of early English texts remains a term of elusive meaning.
The document known as the Tribal Hidage is a very early list thought to date possibly from the 7th century, but known only from a later and unreliable manuscript.
Thus the holder of a hide had a tax burden equivalent to three of his oxen and close upon one-third of the annual value of his land.
Sally Harvey has suggested that the ploughland data in Domesday Book was intended to be used for a complete re-assessment but, if so, it was never actually made.
[23] These measures had a different origin, signifying the amount of land which could be cultivated by one plough team as opposed to a family holding, but all later became artificial fiscal assessments.
[24] The surname Huber (also anglicized as Hoover) is based on the equivalent German word Hube, a unit of land a farmer might own.
Much work has been done investigating the hidation of various counties and also in attempts to discover more about the origin and development of the hide and the purposes for which it was used, but without producing many clear conclusions which would help the general reader.