1/2 Penny Somerset - Bath / M. Lambe and Son

Bath's trade token revival of the 1790s emerged directly from a chronic national shortage of regal copper coinage — the Royal Mint had struck virtually no halfpennies between 1775 and 1799, leaving provincial commerce to fend for itself. M. Lambe and Son were among dozens of Bath merchants who commissioned tokens through the commercial die-sinkers of Birmingham and Bristol, most notably the Soho Mint, which industrialized the process entirely. Lambe's tokens circulated locally as functional small change rather than as advertising novelties, redeemable at the issuing firm.

DH#50 is catalogued by Dalton and Hamer within a dense Bath sequence; Atkins#40 cross-references confirm the type without recorded die variations of significance.