If you were born in the first half of the last century the chances are that you carried a little bit of our collective history around with you.
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| Queen Victoria penny, 1865 |
But in 1971 when the country adopted a currency based on decimal units almost all of the existing coinage was junked.
Out went the old-fashioned penny, the threepenny bit as well as the ha’penny and while some silver coinage lingered on, kidnapped and made to perform a new role as decimal coins they too pretty quickly vanished as the bight new shinny stuff rolled out of the Mint.
And of course, all the new coins bore the head of the reigning monarch, which is how it has been ever since, ensuring that the oldest real decimal coin dated from 1971.
All of which for my generation wiped out the history lesson whereby you might have coins in your pocket stretching back into the mid-19th century, and meant you rubbed hands with effigies of Queen Victoria, Edward V11, King George V and V1 as well as the young Elizabeth.
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| Reverse of Queen Victoria, penny, 1865 |
So while early and mid-Victorian pennies were rare they did turn up, hence this 1865 one, and those of Edward and the two Georges were to pinch the phrase “two a penny”.
At which point I am not making out any great claims that this was much of a history lesson, but it did mean you were vaguely aware of the past stretching out in front of you.
And in another way, it points to the historical continuity which was a currency based on pounds shillings and pennies, where 240 pennies made a pound, 12 pennies made a shilling and twenty shillings made a pound, and along the way introduced to the guinea.
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| Half penny, 1951 |
At the time of decimalization great claims were made of how complicated was a currency based on different units, but I doubt many of us were, after all we grew up with it and it was just part of the backdrop of normal life, like steam locomotives, black and white television and bus conductors.
And in Junior school it was just one of the many ways you learnt to add up and subtract along with those more challenging problem solving exercises involving four men, three women seven apples and the amount of money Eric Braithwaite might make from selling the apples to the people at 2d an apple.
All of which makes me wonder whether Roman school children had to endure the same brain numbing lessons or for that matter the slave sent out into the local market to get the best deals on olive oil and black pepper.
This is no flight of fancy but a very unsubtle way of introducing this Roman coin which along with three others I bought in a small shop behind the British Museum sometime around 1974.
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| Roman coin, Claudius, 43 -54 AD |
At the time I was looking for the odd little teacher resource to make the teaching of Roman history a bit more interesting.
Already I had bought a replica Roman lamp and very shamefully presented an old leather sandal bought in the Eighth Day on Oxford Road as a genuine 1st century piece of Roman footwear similar to those found at Vindolanda along the Wall.
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| Reverse of the Claudian coin, |
Now as we are in confessional mood I can’t say this one is part of the four I bought for what amounted £2 new money, and it is possible that it came from a collection of replicas I bought later.
Either way I still find it something to look at, and put with the very real Viking oyster shell I bought in York at the Jorwick archaeological dig in the later 1970s for the price of 10 new pence, there being so many found during the excavation.
The shell I can date to the Viking settlements of York and I think the coin is the Emperor Claudius and the rest as they is another story.
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| Viking oyster shell, Jorvick |
Pictures; Queen Victoria penny 1865, half penny, 1951, a Roman coin from the era of the Emperor Claudius, [I think] and a Viking oyster shell from Jorvick
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