1/2 Penny Somerset - Bath / F. Heath

F. Heath operated as an ironmonger in Bath during the acute small-change shortage of the 1790s, when the Royal Mint had essentially abandoned copper coinage production for over a decade. Provincial tradesmen across Britain stepped into the void by commissioning their own tokens, which circulated as functional currency by mutual local acceptance rather than any legal authority. Heath's token was struck by a commercial diesinker — almost certainly one of the Birmingham trade button and token manufacturers who dominated the provincial token industry during this period.

Batty's cataloguing places this piece at #670 within a substantial Bath sequence, reflecting how densely tokenized the Somerset region became by 1795.