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1/2 Penny Kent - Romney / John Sawyer
| Issuer | John Sawyer, Romney |
|---|---|
| Year | 1794 |
| Type | Emergency coin |
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|---|---|
| Obverse script | Latin |
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| Reverse description | A small antique clinker-built sloop depicted in profile at centre, its single mast with rigging rising prominently and a pennant or streamer flying from the masthead, the vessel riding upon stylised water lines. Flanking the ship on either side are symmetrical sprigs of laurel or olive, their branches curving gracefully upward to frame the central device. The curved legend THE SUCCESS. arcs across the upper field, identifying the vessel by name. |
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| Additional information |
Romney's position as a Cinque Port town in decline made it an unlikely place for a tradesman's token issue, but by the 1790s the chronic shortage of regal small change had spread well beyond London into Kent's coastal communities. John Sawyer's halfpenny belongs to the wave of provincial copper tokens that flooded Britain between roughly 1787 and 1797, filling a gap the Royal Mint had largely ignored for decades. The Monneron brothers and Matthew Boulton's Soho Mint set the mechanical standard that issuers like Sawyer were implicitly competing with.
DH#38 places this piece firmly within Dalton and Hamer's Kent series catalogued in 1910.