Arpents, perches, toise, acres?! Terms that many from outside Mauritius are not familiar with, yet are used to describe and report on daily real estate transactions within these tropical borders. We breakdown and unbundled a brief guide to commonly used units of measurements within Mauritius.
Arpent
An arpent is derived from the Old-French units of land area and is a unit of length. It is a pre-metric French unit still used in the French territories of Canada, some areas of the USA that were part of French Louisiana, Mauritius and Seychelles. An arpent is equivalent to roughly 190 feet in length. An interesting fact is that the word was first used in 1580. 1 arpent = 0.84 acres or 0.4 hectares.
Perch
A Perch is a land surveying measurement, and also a unit of length measuring 16.5 feet. This term was widely used in the 1800’s transcribing state-land property records in old deeds, surveys, and contracts. A perch was most closely related to the measurement of a rod or pole and the distance described was used between non-symmetrical geographical locations and landmarks when determining the total land area i.e 60 perches.
Toise
A toise is a unit of measure for length, area and volume originating in pre-revolutionary France. It was used in colonial French establishments during the 1800’s such as early North America, France, French Louisiana, Acadia and Quebec.
Acre
An acre, a more universally known term, is a unit of land area equal to approximately 4,000 m2. An acre is slightly smaller than a traditional football field and is commonly used in today's terms along with the terms ‘hectares’ when measuring land parcels.
1 arpent = 100 perches
1 perche = 11.11 toise
1 acre = 119 perches
Log in to contact the seller
Continue with Facebook
Continue with Email
