As readers of a previous note by me on this blog will be aware, I am currently looking into the Expanding Cross type of Edward the Confessor, with a view to determining the relative chronological order of its Heavy and Light phases. In the process I have reviewed the evidence for the type supplied by coins reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, and it seems to me that it would be helpful to provide the numismatic community with a list of the coins concerned, with updated attributions and other relevant comment. If other readers of this blog with specialist knowledge of the issues of particular mints can assist with attributions for coins which I have so far failed to identify either in whole or in part, I would be most grateful. Click here to read the article
Author: BNS Blog Coordinator
Edward III Florin coinage of Durham – The “VILA” reverse die – Denis Martin
The third coinage of Edward III, usually referred to as the Florin coinage, is a complex issue particularly so in the case of those coins produced at the Durham mint. This article focuses on a particularly puzzling reverse die, the VILA or Villa die, which has been shown to have been used in the period 1348 to 1351 towards the end of the series. The author has identified two VILA dies, described how they can be distinguished and produced a corpus of the coins known to him. Click here to access the article
Analysis of Cut 8 Reales Countermarked by Rothsay Mills – Eric C. Hodge
Countermarks are intriguing but when they are on cut portions of the original host coin then many additional questions arise. This note is to explore more about the cutting and countermarking of the 8 reales and what quantity of silver loss was experienced during the cutting process. Click here to read the article.
An Unusual 1920G Shilling from West Africa – G. Oddie
In West Africa around 1920 the silver coinage was replaced by a tin-brass alloy. The contract for 4,000,000 shillings was given to J.R. Gaunt and Son Ltd. of Birmingham, however the company was unable to complete the work and only produced just 16,000 pieces. Surviving pieces are quite rare, and this brief article makes a few observations on some known examples. Click here to read the article
Lord Stewartby – The Numismatic Legacy
The British Numismatic Society, The Royal Numismatic Society with the Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles Committee Joint Summer Meeting, 28 June 2019 at the British Academy, London. Lord Stewartby (1935-2018) was among the leading figures in British numismatic scholarship in the second half of the twentieth century. He published over two hundred papers and was a major contributor both to the development of what became the Medieval European Coinage publication project at Cambridge and other widely regarded publications. His interests ranged across the Romano-British coinage of the London mint, Anglo-Saxon and Viking coinage, medieval English coinage as well as Scottish coinage, the latter being a field in which he was pre-eminent both as a collector and as a scholar. This all day Symposium on 28 June at the British Academy comprises a series of papers by leading figures who place the use of numismatic evidence at the forefront of historical and archaeological interpretation. Structured around topics with which Lord Stewartby was deeply engaged with it will
Tracking a Catrine Cotton Works countermarked 8 Reales – Eric C. Hodge
New Internet Search Facilities are making available more detailed records everyday. In this article the Newman Numismatic Portal has allowed the investigation of Virgil Brand records appertaining to a Catrine Cotton Works countermarked 8 reales. Click here to read the article.
A Moneyer for Edward the Confessor Created by a Printing Error – by Hugh Pagan
This article explains how a printers’ error mistakenly led to a belief amongst some numismatists that Edward the Confessor’s Expanding Cross type included coins from the moneyer Wulfwine at Wallingford. This was based on an erroneous auction catalogue entry dating back to 1955 that referred to PVLFPINE ON PALI (Wallingford). Wulfwine was in consequence listed as a moneyer for the Wallingford mint in this type both by Dr Anthony Freeman, writing in 1985, and by Kenneth Jonsson and the late Gay Van der Meer in their authoritative listing in 1990 of mints and moneyers for the period between c.973 and 1066. Click here to read the article.
An Engraver’s Error – A Second Hand (Aethelred II) Penny of Norwich – by Steve Green
This brief note describes an Aethelred II penny from the Norwich mint with the anomolous moneyer name of FORANTINC. Click here to read the article.
A New Mint for Edward I class 3b/c Transitional Pennies – D. I Greenhalgh
All the recent works for Edward I pennies give the mints that struck for the rare sub-class issue of class 3b/c transitional pennies as London and Canterbury; this note documents the recent discovery of a class 3b/c penny from the York mint. Click here to access the article.
An Eighteenth Century Document Pertaining to the Edinburgh Mint – David Rampling.
The purpose of this note is to place on record a document saved by an eminent nineteenth century numismatist as an insertion in a grangerized book. Documents relating to the Scottish mint during its lengthy survival from the cessation of coinage in 1709 until its closure in 1817 are rarely in the public domain. The Draft of Warrant, dated 1750, and transcribed in this article, may also fill a temporal gap in the National Archive, which is apparently deficient of similar documents for the mid-eighteenth century. Click here to access the article Note: A “grangerized” book is one that has had its’ illustrative content augmented by the insertion of additional prints, drawings, engravings, etc., not included in the original volume.
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