The chain makes more sense as being one tenth of a furlong (as still used in horse racing in the US, Great Britain and Ireland!), which is of course one eighth

The chain makes more sense as being one tenth of a furlong (as still used in horse racing in the US, Great Britain and Ireland!), which is of course one eighth of a mile. Also, an acre is one furlong long by one chain wide. Not coincidentally, a cricket pitch is one chain long. My education was almost all in the metric system but a decent knowledge of the imperial system still makes the world a bit easier to understand.