Fortunately I have discovered an occurrence of the word solanda which conclusively proves that it meant an estate, such as a prebend, and was not a unit of measurement. We have, in 1183, a 'grant by William de Belmes, canon of St. Paul's, to the chapter of that church, of the Church of St. Pancras, situate in his solanda near London' (i.e. his prebend of St. Pancras), etc.[193] This solves the mystery. The three solandæ at Tillingham were no other than the three prebends—Ealdland, Weldland, and Reculverland—which that parish actually contained.[194]
Hale, however, misled Mr Seebohm, who in his great work on the English Village Community (p. 54), wrote of Tillingham:
There was further in this Manor a double hide, called a solanda, presumably of 240 acres. This double hide, called a solanda, is also mentioned in a Manor in Middlesex [Sutton], and in another in Surrey [Drayton][195]; and the term solanda is probably the same as the well-known 'Sollung' or 'solin' of Kent, meaning a 'ploughland'.
Proceeding further (p. 395), Mr Seebohm wrote:
Generally in Kent, and sometimes in Sussex, Berks and Essex, we found, in addition to, or instead of, the hide or carucate, or 'terra unius aratri', solins, sullungs, or swullungs, the land pertaining to a 'suhl', the Anglo-Saxon word for plough.
Unfortunately no reference is given for the cases of Sussex and Berks, and I know of none myself.
Turning now to the learned work of Professor Vinogradoff, we find him equally misled:
Of the sulung I have spoken already. It is a full ploughland, and 200 acres are commonly reckoned to belong to it. The name is sometimes found out of Kent, in Essex for instance. In Tillingham, a Manor of St. Paul's, of London, we come across six hides 'trium solandarum'. The most probable explanation seems to be that the hide or unit of assessment is contrasted with the solanda or sulland[196] (sulung), that is with the actual ploughland, and two hides are reckoned as a single solanda (p. 255).
Lastly, we come to Mr Seebohm's reply to Professor Vinogradoff (ante, pp. 444-465). Here the identity is again assumed:
Along with parts of Essex, the Kentish records differ in phraseology from those of the rest of England. Their sullungs of 240 acres occur also in the Manors of Essex belonging to St. Paul's, and the custom of gavelkind and succession of the youngest child mark it off as exceptional. Mr Vinogradoff ... shows that in the Kentish district, and in Essex, where the sullung or solanda takes the place of the hide, and where gavelkind prevailed, the unity of the hides and virgates was preserved only for the purposes of taxation and the services; whilst in reality the holdings clustered under the nominal unit were many and irregular.