1 Penny Cornwall - Scorrier House

Scorrier House, near Redruth, was the seat of the Williams family — one of the most powerful mining dynasties in Georgian Cornwall. Their interests extended across dozens of copper and tin mines in the Gwennap district, and by the early nineteenth century the family had the commercial reach to justify issuing their own tradesman's token during the chronic small-change shortage that plagued Britain throughout the Napoleonic Wars. Parliament's failure to produce sufficient regal copper coinage left merchants and mine operators across the country filling the gap themselves.

The Williams tokens are among the more substantial private issues from Cornwall's mining interior, as opposed to the coastal merchant tokens that dominate Davis's listings for the county.