We all like getting hammered at the weekend...

One of the good things about detecting in the UK is that we have a very rich history and a long history of metalworking. Metal working started with the Bell Beaker culture introducing copper and gold objects and Bronze (an alloy of Tin and Bronze) followed not longer afterwards. Cast and worked Bronze objects started to be made here about 2500 BCE or around 4500 years ago. This was before most parts of the world, partially because Copper and Tin were both relatively easy to find. There was also some gold to be had but the Romans extracted a lot of that - about 850 KGs of it. That may not sound a lot but is about £89 million at current prices. Anyway, the British isles were a center of metalworking in the past and, as recently as the 1970s, was still globally important in this area. 

The first coins used in Britain were Gallo-Belgic staters imported from overseas as the result of trade between the celtic tribes in Britain and Gaul in the middle of the second century BC. Shortly thereafter, coins began to be produced domestically. At first, these were imitations of the overseas issues, but within a few decades began to be issued in the name or rather, particular style of the various tribes or rulers.  These were replaced by Roman coins after the conquest of Britain - which started in the South-east of England. The first landings by the Romans (led by Julius Caesar) was in 55 BCE in Kent. The main landings were in 43 BCE in Surrey - and progress was largely tribe by tribe. Some fought, some surrendered and some struck financial deals. By AD 75, Roman rule was pretty extensive with one of the largest Roman palaces being built in Fishbourne occupied by local boy made good, Togidubnus. He changed his name to Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus to please his Roman masters. A lot of Roman coin flowed in during that time - and natural resources and slaves flowed to Rome. 

There were around 20 billion (American Billion so 20 x 1000 x 1 million) Roman coins minted. That isn’t a typo. There were estimated to be around 1.2 billion coins in circulation at any given time. Only a relatively small fraction of those made it to Britain at the far north of the empire but there were certainly many millions and so it is not surprising that we are still finding them today. Even after the fall of Rome in the West, coins were still produced in the Eastern parts of the Empire - there were mints in most parts of the empire including Britain. By the way, the term Billon is also used to mean the alloy that coins were made of (yes, spelled with the one “i”). Especially during the third century, there was a lot less silver in the coins. The pattern repeats throughout history with the British coins. From 1551 to 1919, silver coins were 92.5% silver. From 1920 to 1946, the coins were 50% silver. Modern “silver” coins are cupro-nickel with no silver content at all and modern copper coins are copper plated steel. 

So, what did people use for coins after the Romans left? Bronze coins stopped being accepted because there was little trust in them. Silver coins were still used but people started clipping the edges for the silver which carried on until relatively modern milled coins. The value of coins became that of the metal rather than the face value and we see hack silver and hack gold from this time until the 7th century. Hack gold is exactly what it sounds like. If you wanted to pay for something, you hacked off a chunk of precious metal of the agreed weight. This destroyed a lot of artefacts but we sometimes find ring money or the remains of metal bars that were used for this. We find a lot of other types of rings, of course. It is hard to tell the difference between bits of Victorian copper alloy ring used with leather straps and Celtic bronze ring money. 

You sometimes find Roman coins with a hole in them from after the fall of Rome - they were sometimes worn as pendants or other decoration but that is about it until hammered coins started to come back in the 7th century. There were not many of these coins at first and few of them survived. They were small silver 'sceats' (meaning 'wealth') based on Frankish (French) currency. They were disks made of silver and struck between two dies to impress a design on them. After Sceats came Deniers (also French) and where the Danelaw applied (well north of where we detect), Viking coins and locally made copies of Viking coins can be found. There will be a few to be found in the south but they are pretty uncommon.

The Normans changed a lot of things after 1066 but the design of coins stayed much the same for a while, just with a different monarch’s face on them. The coins were silver or bronze and they followed the French pattern but they got thinner as time went on - Sceats were small but relatively thick while hammered coins from the medieval period tend to be thinner and generally larger. The quality of the metal varied as well. Henry VIII (he of the many wives) increased the amount of copper in the silver coins to such an extent that the pennies were said to be blushing in shame. This was known as “The great debasement”. Edward VII restored the quality of the coins after a few years of rule but Elizabeth I still found it necessary to recall all of the debased coinage and replace it with good silver and gold coins - which is one of the reasons that we find more coins of Elizabeth I than might be expected. She was not a universally popular monarch and sometimes her portrait is defaced. She faced significant periods of unpopularity and criticism during and after her reign due to religious persecution, financial strain, and her refusal to marry. She was excommunicated by the Pope and the persecution of Catholics that followed wasn’t welcomed everywhere.

We see hammered silver coins and Jettons right up until the Georgian period. Jettons or tokens continued to be made even after coins were no longer in the same style. We often find such tokens and they fall into a few different camps. There are jettons that were used as counters in games or other things where you needed to keep track of things. A lot of them were imported from Nuremberg (Nurnberg to use the German spelling) and tokens of this type are generally called Nuremberg Jettons. They look a lot like hammered coins of the same period but are struck in copper alloy rather than silver. There are also tokens from businesses such as pubs, some of which would give a token that could be exchanged for a beer or similar as an incentive to customers. These pretty much always have identifying text of them and are often brass. The final common type is the lead token, normally with a relatively simple pattern on them such as a flower or a star. These were paid to farm workers in particular and could be redeemed from the farmer’s shop. This wasn’t a great deal from the perspective of the workers (the farmer didn’t have to keep the prices low) but it was common practice. 

The most famous of the Georgian coins is the Cartwheel penny, named for its size and thickness.  There was also a less common two pence coin - the penny was 1.2 inches across and the two pence was 1.6 inches across. They were issued by George III in 1797 only and were minted in Birmingham. There were normal sized pennies from the London mint before and after. We often find Georgian copper alloy pennies in the field, sometimes in OK condition and sometimes pretty toasted. A lot depends on what has gone on to the soil and how stoney the soil is. The Georgian coins were a lot like the later Victorian coins that we have all seen. Victoria was Queen from June 1837 to January 1901. The coins show her ageing from the young Victoria with her hair in a bun (Bun-head) to an old lady wearing a veil (Veil-head) as part of her mourning. She was followed by her son, Albert Edward who became King Edward VI - he proved a good king in many ways and the nation prospered. His son, Edward VIII, was only king for a little under a year after marrying for love (Wallace Simpson, an American Divorcee). The coins of this period are all pretty similar although there are very few with Edward VIII as he wasn’t king for long. George VI (the younger brother of Edward VIII) followed and was the king through WWII. He died in 1952 and that brings us to Queen Elizabeth the second,

Elizabeth II had been a mechanic during WWII and served as Queen for 70 years, a record for Britain and the world. Her reign started with 240 pennies to the pound sterling. There were Farthings, Half-pennies, Pennies (1d), Truppeny bits (3d), Sixpences, shillings (12d), Florin (24d), a Half-crown (2s6d or 30d), and the Crown (5 shillings or a quarter of a pound sterling). There were some gold coins made but they were not in general circulation. There was also no groat (4d) or half-groat as they stopped being minted in 1856. That all changed in 1971 when the currency went decimal with the familiar 100 pennies to the pound. Some of the coins had been released in 1968 but the smaller copper coins were only released in 1971. The coins of the time were the ½p, 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, and 50p - the 20p didn’t come along until 1982 and the £1 coin didn’t get released until the following year. The designs of the coins changed with the original versions being physically larger in the case of the 5p and 10p. The £1 coin was originally yellow in colour and a single metal - and it gained the nickname “The Maggie” as it was hard, brassy and thought that it was a sovereign. The bi-metallic £1 coins replaced the old £1 coins in 2017 as there were a lot of fakes in circulation.

We now have King Charles and a new set of coins with his likeness on - facing left and wearing no crown. These may turn out to be the very last British coins in circulation or close to the last. Coins really aren’t used very much any more but there will always be collectors and detectorists will probably still be finding them in a hundred years time.

Finally, you may see in old (pre-decimal)  ledger books that currency was listed as L.S.D - not the drug! The reason comes right back to the Romans. The Latin names of the coins that formed the backbone of the monetary system were used: Librae, Solidi, and Denarii.