Compare other bushels, particularly the U.S. bushel.
Download a chart for converting post-1696 Winchester bushels to liters (or, one in A4 format)
For the last few centuries the Winchester bushel has been a measure of dry capacity of about 2150.42 cubic inches (about 35.239 liters).
Around 871 c.e., King Alfred the Great chose the city of Winchester in southeastern England as the capital of his kingdom of Wessex. One reason for doing so was the town's supply of educated workers, then a function of the church. A cathedral had been built in Winchester as early as 648, and Alfred and his queen founded two more. The town's position as an administrative center continued even after the Norman Conquest (1066). William the Conqueror built a castle there, and the Domesday Book was compiled there. Not until wars of succession in the 12th century did the town decline in importance.
The golden age of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was probably the reign of Alfred's great grandson, Edgar the Peaceable (ruled 959 – 976 c.e.), arguably the first King of England. One of the problems Edgar addressed was weights and measures:
8. & gange án mynet ofer ealne þæs cyniges anweald, & þone nan man ne forsace.
§1. & gange án gemet & an gewihte, swilce man on Lundenbirig & Wintaceastre healde.
§2. & ga seo wæge wulle to cxx p', & nan man hig undeoror ne sille.
chapter 8. And let one money pass throughout the king's realm; and that let no man refuse.
§1. and let one measure and one weight pass; such as is in use in London and Winchester;
§2. and let the wey of wool go for 120 pence, and no one sell it for less.
A.J Robertson, editor and translator.
The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925.
The above law comes from the third year of Edgar's reign. (An Old English letter that isn't available in browser fonts has been replaced with ampersands, which have the same meaning.) The translation is from Thorpe1, revised slightly.
Winchester also seems to have been a center for manufacturing measures.2 In any case, it became associated with standard grain measures. (The British would say “corn measures”; in British English, “corn” means grain, including wheat, barley and so forth. In the United States “corn” specifically means maize.) The term “Winchester measure”, however, did not appear in the laws until the 17th century.
1. Benjamin Thorpe.
Ancient Laws and Institutes of England.
London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1840.
2. See for example
Doris M. Stenton, editor.
Pipe Roll, 9 Richard I. Volume XLVI N.S. VIII
London: Pipe Roll Society, 1931. Under Hampshire.
Several of the early kings distributed copies of standards to the various shires and cities; Richard I, for example, in 1197. Presumably the early capacity standards were made of wood and have decayed; in any case, none are known to have survived. The earliest surviving bushel prototype is a bronze vessel from Henry VII (made in 1497) of 2144.81 cubic inches; another made at the behest of Elizabeth I (1601) is 2148.28 cubic inches.1 Both can now be seen at the Science Museum in London. When copies of the Elizabethan bushel standard were distributed to the various counties and cities, Winchester did not receive one. The bushel standard it had from Henry VII was stamped on the rim with crowned E's, apparently indicating it conformed to Elizabeth’s new standard. It may even have played a role in defining Elizabeth's standard. In any case, the recycling of Winchester's standard bushel indicates that Henry VII's bushel and Elizabeth's were regarded as identical at the time.
1. These values are taken from measurements made in 1931 – 32, which are more accurate than Everard's in 1696.
From early times a bushel contained 8 gallons, and each gallon was the volume occupied by 8 pounds of wheat. This idea of defining a unit of capacity as the volume of a given weight of a particular grain goes back thousands of years, but in many respects wheat is not the ideal substance for the purpose. As any farmer knows, the weight of a gallon of wheat fluctuates as its moisture content changes. The weight even depends upon the height from which the wheat is poured into the container. But wheat had the overwhelming advantage of being the commodity about which everyone cared desperately.
There is some difficulty in knowing which “pound” is meant. Not until a statute of Henry VII do we get an identification of the pound that is fairly clear today:
that the measure of a bushel contains VIII gallons of wheat and that every gallon contain VIII pounds of wheat of Troy weight.
Act 12 Henry VII c 5.
Statutes, vol II, pages 637-638.
Thus a bushel of wheat should weigh 64 Troy pounds. Modern wheat is not the same as that of Henry VII's time, but fortunately in the 18th century Henry Norris1 measured the density of English wheat, pre-fertilizer, pesticide, and hybridization. He showed that 8 Troy pounds of wheat occupy a gallon of 239.5 cubic inches. Eight such gallons would be 1916 cubic inches, not Henry's 2144.81. In fact, regardless of what his statute said, Henry VII's bronze standard contains not 8, but 9 gallons –72 Troy pounds of wheat. The standard was made to reflect the practice of the marketplace, where wheat was sold in heaped measures. One of Henry's bushels, stricken, would contain the same amount of wheat as 8 heaped gallons.
1. Henry Norris.
An Inquiry to show, what was the ancient English Weight and Measure according to
the Laws or Statutes, prior to the Reign of Henry the Seventh.
Philosophical Transactions, volume 65, pages 48-58 (1775).
In preparation for the passage of a duty on malt in 1696, in the presence of members of Parliament Thomas Everard, the official Excise Gauger, and his assistants measured the capacity of the Exchequer's Elizabethan standard bushel. They arrived at 2145.6 cubic inches. All were aware that money from the new tax would not be forthcoming until hundreds of new wooden measures had been made and distributed to merchants and customs agents. To facilitate the manufacture of the new measures, its dimensions were rounded off to 18½ inches in diameter by 8 inches high. In Everard's own words:
for a Cylindrical Vessel of these Dimensions will contain 2150.42 solid inches, which exceeding the Content of the Standard Bushel but 4.82 [cubic] Inches, and there being no other convenient Dimensions (without counting to the Hundredth Part of an Inch) that would come so near as these, It was enacted, in the Act1 for Laying a Duty upon Malt, that every Round Bushel with a plain and even Bottom, being eighteen Inches and a half Diameter throughout, and eight Inches deep, shall be esteemed a legal Winchester Bushel, according to the standard in His Majesty's Exchequer.
Thomas Everard.
Stereometry, or the Art of Gauging made Easy, by the help of a sliding
rule.... 10th edition.
London: 1738.
We are indebted to Robin Connor and A. D. C. Simpson for
pointing out (in their Weights and Measures in Scotland) that this
passage does not occur in editions prior to the ninth.
Britain specifically abolished the Winchester bushel in 18242, in the act establishing imperial measure. Nonetheless, in the United Kingdom it continued to be used for such purposes as customary procedures for setting land rents, though heaped measure was abolished in 18343 and 1835.4. In the meantime, the “simplified” bushel had crossed the Atlantic and become the basis of the bushel in the United States.
1. 8 and 9 William III, chap. 22, sections 9 and 45.
Statutes, Vol 7.
Pages 248 and 256.
2. 5 George IV chap. 74.
Statutes at Large, vol 23, page 759.
3. 4 and 5 William IV chap. 49.
Statutes at Large. Vol 27.
Page 629.
4. 5 and 6 William IV chap. 63.
Statutes at Large. Vol 27.
Page 977.
R. D. Connor.
The Weights and Measures of England.
London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1987.
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Last revised: 24 March 2008.