Furlong the fundamental unit of land measurement. A furlong was forty rods, an acre four by 40 rods, or four rods by one furlong, and thus 160 square rods. At the time, the Saxons used the North German foot, which was 10 percent longer than the foot of today. When England changed to the shorter foot in the late 13th century, rods and furlongs remained unchanged, since property boundaries were already defined in rods and furlongs. The only thing that changed was the number of feet and yards in a rod or a furlong, and the number of square feet and
Walter Furlong Walter Furlong Walter Furlong (1 September 1893 – 11 December 1973) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician. He was elected on his second attempt, to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) for the Cork Borough constituency at the 1944 general election. He lost his Dáil seat at the 1948 general election, and was an unsuccessful candidate at the 1951 general election. Furlong was a member of Cork City Council and served as Lord Mayor of Cork in 1951. According to his death notice Furlong was in "G" Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Cork Brigade, Old IRA in 1916,