The Chorlton farthing, halfpenny and penny from Reynard Road …. bringing luck to the house

Now, there will be someone who can offer up a full and detailed explanation for the practice of putting coins in or around the entrance to a house.

I am guessing it will be a pre Christian practice.  

One suggestion I read referred back to “Italian folklore probably - it's so that money will flow freely into the home and that the people inside prosper”, and another reminded me that coins were placed at the foot of masts in sailing ships.

My grandparents found a coin dating from King George III under the stone step in their two up two down on Hope Street in Derby, which dated the row of terraced houses .

And Jaime who lives on Reynard Road sent over these coins adding, “Good morning Andrew, I thought I’d share another interesting thing about our house. 

We are having some work done and my builder found some old coins in the old door frame.  There’s a 1927 penny, 1939 farthing, 1942+1943 half pennies. 

They were in the old back door frame. I think at a later date a small extension was added”.

The houses date from the early 20th century, and so as Jaime says the extension will have been added later sometime after 1943, but I suspect not long afterwards, but maybe after the war.

In 1939, a Mr. Sydney Mckew who was a long distance lorry driver shared the house with Ada Faulkner and George Hayes, which for the time being is s close a we are going to get to those coins and the little back extension.  

Ada was twelve years older than Sydney and described her occupation as “Unpaid domestic duties”, while George was 29 and was “Milk Roundsman”.

In time we may find out more about the three and push forward the time when they lived in the house to when the coins were deposited.

But for now that is pretty much it, other than to reflect that there will be many like me who not only remember all of the coins Jaime sent over but will have used them until they became history with the move to decimal coinage.

Although I have come across and written about other odd objects found in houses, including the Salford shoe, and the 1910 cheese sandwich.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; “Four coins from a doorway", 2021, from the collection of Jaime Cockcroft-Bailey