1/2 Penny Wicklow - Cronebane / Miners Arms

The Associated Irish Mines Company operated the Cronebane copper mine in County Wicklow, one of the most productive in eighteenth-century Ireland. Company tokens of this type were issued to pay workers directly, a common practice where state coinage was chronically undersupplied — Ireland's copper currency shortage in the 1780s and 1790s was acute enough that private industrial tokens became the de facto small change across much of the country.

Dalton & Hamer's reference 39 covers several die marriages within this issue, and minor varieties exist.