Description
In the mid 1790s John Skidmore issued a series of halfpenny tokens featuring Churches in the City of London. In the 1790s there was no official small change which caused considerable distress amongst the general population. No small transactions could take place as no change could be given for as most provisions and small goods etc were valued in pence, trade and transactions were severely hampered. The way round this was for merchants to issue their own small change and in order not to contravene the counterfeiting laws they issued ‘tokens’ that were ultimately exchangeable in coin of the realm. As these were essentially a bullion coinage, exchange into official coin was not necessary and for the ten years of the 1790s ‘tokens ‘ were about the only coppers one would have had in one’s pocket !
As there were so many different types of tokens circulating at this time a real craze of collecting them developed. John Skidmore, an ironmonger in Holborn, saw a gap in the market and had these tokens made with London churches on to sell to collectors of the time – or if he couldn’t sell them, to simply use as halfpennies. Many did circulate as change, as it is very common to find them now worn condition.
Simon Monks pictures every coin showing the source of the image (usually plates from William Thornton’s Description and Survey of the cities of London and Westminster 1784) and also pictures the church as it now stands – or at least, the location where it stood. Plus giving a short history of the church. Of the 54 churches featured on his tokens only 34 remain – the others having been demolished over time or destroyed by German bombs in WWII.
Softback, 131 pages with lots of pictures, this publication is enormously interesting – putting London churches in the context of today with reference to their images as portrayed on halfpennies issued in the last decade of the 18th. century.
