1 Pound Bewdley Bank

Bewdley, a small Worcestershire river town, was thoroughly unsuited to sustaining a private bank in the early nineteenth century — the town's commercial traffic had been declining since the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal bypassed its traditional river trade. Samuel Ikey Son & Co. issued notes regardless, as hundreds of English country banks did during the Restriction Period, when the Bank of England's suspension of gold payments from 1797 onward opened the door to provincial paper currency on a scale that would have been impossible under metallic discipline.

The Bewdley Bank failed. Most of these small Worcestershire issuers did not survive the post-Napoleonic contraction of 1815–1816.