Author: BNS Blog Coordinator

Bedfordshire Tokens, Tickets, Checks and Passes – Supplement 1- Gary Oddie

Publishing a book in late 2023 that could have had the title Bedfordshire Tokens – Everything that isn’t Seventeenth Century was always likely to lead to the discovery of new pieces. This note adds illustrations of a few pieces that were known at the time of writing, but had not been located for photography, along with the predicted new examples of tokens used by farmers and Market Gardeners along the Greensands Ridge.

As much as will lay upon a sixpence – Laura Burnett

We are probably all familiar with the use of modern coins as adhoc scale bars in photographs of objects. A phenomenon so widespread, and accepted, that it is found in scientific journals as well as hurried snaps. We are also familiar with the use of coins as weights, either reflecting their expected weights in societies where they circulated, or re-used as weights once they had gone out of use as coinage. However, when spending a fun lunch hour taking part in the Early Modern Recipes Online transcribeathon last November I was intrigued to come across coins being used as a way to measure a quantity of ingredients, not by weight, but by area….

A fifth Cork groat of the readeption of Henry VI – Oisín Mac Conamhna and Jack Pope

Very recently, one of us wrote about the four Irish groats then known from the second reign of Henry VI, all from Cork, in the political and numismatic context of the contemporary earldom of Desmond. Even more recently, the other of us has acquired a fifth newly-found specimen of this coinage. The purpose of this note is to record and describe this addition to the corpus.

A Christmas Shilling From Manchester, 2013 – Gary Oddie

This note presents a very recent shilling token issued for Manchester Christmas Market, 2013. Correspondence at the time with the designing artist and Manchester City Council revealed the story behind the token. The market is still going strong, unlike most of the web pages used only a decade ago  – a useful reminder that modern tokens need recording before they are forgotten.

From Beldibi to Bedfordshire – 11,000 Years of Tokens Part 3. Coming Full Circle – Gary Oddie

This final instalment brings the story to a close with a simple graphical method to show how tokens were the likely precursors of coins and all currency. The only difference is that tokens are issued by individuals or small groups of people for local use and coins and currency are issued by a state or official body and defined to be current by law. Both tokens and coins rely on rules and an understanding of how they are to be used. The token story is bookended with a neolithic clay cone from Beldibi c.9000 BC and a stone cone used in a Bedfordshire pub in 1990. And here is access to the earlier articles: Part 1, Part 2

From Beldibi to Bedfordshire – 11,000 Years of Tokens Part 2. Pushing the Boundaries – Gary oddie

This Blog, the second in a series of three, presents a very brief overview of a conference held at Warwick University in 2017 – Tokens: Culture, Connections, Communities. The series of talks took the concept of tokens back to the early classical civilisations and with the work of Denise Schmandt-Besserat to the neolithic and the first appearance of locally organised societies, record keeping and the beginnings of writing.A clay envelope dating from 5500-4500 BC is probed using 3-D X-ray tomography to allow the tokens inside to be imaged, along with the maker’s thumbprint in the clay. …. or click here for part 1