I've been reading Marc Morris' A Great and Terrible King, and he mentions that Edward called up for service anyone who had lands that brought in 20 pounds per year. Is there some way to visualize how big of a piece of land that was? Are we talking a few acres or vast areas?
Hi there. I wrote an answer here about estimating the size of land by using Domesday Book that may be relevant to your question.
Almost 200 years pass between the compilation of Domesday and the reign of Edward I in the late 13th Century, so we may have to account for some inflation, but Domesday can give us the rough value of property during the early medieval period. As you might expect, the taxable value of an estate depends a great deal on the type of land and the intensity with which it was farmed. This type of information also accounts for the sometimes surprising difference in the size of a "hundred" between counties.
Farmland in England is often measured in "hundreds" or, in the case of Domesday, in "ploughlands". These are broadly speaking equivalent to about 120 acres. Other less common measurements include the carrucate and the sulung, which was particularly popular in Kent.
To pick a random, local example from Domesday, the village of Siston in Gloucestershire, just outside the major port city of Bristol, was relatively large with a population of 22 households (approximately 80-90 people) and a taxable value of £5 a year. This value came from the 6 ploughlands, so approximately 720 acres. 2 of these belonged directly to the lord, probably worked by the 4 slave households, while 4 were worked by the villagers and smallholders of the settlement. The neighbouring settlement of Oldland, with three ploughlands (approximately 360 acres), drew a taxable income of only £1. It had previously been valued at £4, but by 1066 had been granted to St Peter's in Exeter, and as a result, only the one independent ploughland belonging to the villagers was elligible for taxation. In this rural setting, therefore, dependant on land use, a considerable area might be needed to own £20 of taxable property. If we extrapolate the rough values from Siston and Oldland, around 20 ploughlands, or 2,400 acres, might be necessary.
At the Bristol suburb of Barton Regis (now Eastville), there's a very different story. Barton Regis was an extremely large settlement with over 70 households and 46 ploughlands, but also had 2 mills. As a result, its value was estimated at some £101. Much of this land was owned by the Church, however, and so did not pay tax.