17th Century Farthings Found in the Village
Farthing tokens formed a non-government sanctioned "money of necessity," and were issued in England, Wales, and Ireland in the seventeenth century. They were the small change of the period and were extremely useful to the people who issued and used them. After the civil war and commonwealth period without a king, there was a shortage of smaller denomination coins. To overcome the problem this caused, local businesses across the country made their own tokens for use as currency. This local token was made in 1670 in Kilve by Charles Mitchell who is listed in records as being a clothier.
This farthing below was issued by the City of Bath in 1670. There are hundreds of different locally produced farthings and they represent multiple trades from pubs, candlestick makers, cobblers and many others.
The 17th Century was not the only time that unofficial coinage was used, in 1811 under the reign of George III there was a shortage of copper coins. To help support the country some of the large UK copper companies started to manufacture copper pennies to support commerce. The shortage of coins was partly to do with the fact that in the George III era it was considered that a 1 penny copper coin should have exactly 1 penny’s worth of copper used to make it, which was about an ounce of copper. In 1797 when George III issued what was to become known as the ‘cartwheel’ penny, there was one ounce of copper in each penny made. By 1811 the price of copper had risen several times due to the costs of the Napoleonic War, and the pennies were being melted down to support this. Whilst this was happening there was also the industrial revolution occurring and machines were making industry more efficient, and more people were employed and needed copper coins as wages.
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Below is a 1 penny token made in 1811 by the Rose Copper company, it weighs about 1 ounce. The industrial revolution helped to lead to increased mining of copper, so it brought the price back down and therefore some tokens were made out of one ounce of copper again.
Below is a George III ‘cartwheel’ penny from 1797 weighing one ounce. It was not a popular coin hence its nick name.
