1/2 Penny - Alfred the Great London monogram type

Alfred struck this monogram type during the period when he and the Carolingian-influenced moneyers of London were experimenting with a revived, more sophisticated coinage — partly as a political statement following his recapture of London from Viking control in 886. The city's return was formalized in a treaty with Æthelred of Mercia, and the coinage that followed was deliberately ambitious, echoing Carolingian prototypes in a bid to project legitimacy.

The halfpenny denomination is substantially rarer than the penny of the same type. Many surviving examples are irregular in flan, a predictable consequence of hand-cutting silver blanks to fractional weight.