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1 Pound Guernsey Commercial Banking Company
| Issuer | Guernsey Commercial Banking Company |
|---|---|
| Year | 1908 |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Black letterpress text on white paper with engraved vignette at centre-top showing a classical allegorical figure beside a sailing ship, flanked by two circular guilloche corner medallions each inscribed ONE. The promise-to-pay text reads across the centre in copperplate script, with the denomination ONE POUND in large bold lettering below. Serial number panels appear at lower left and right, with the issuer name in an arc above the vignette and a panel reading One Pound at lower left. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | GUERNSEY COMMERCIAL BANKING COMPANY. / We Promise to Pay the Bearer on Demand ONE POUND Value received. / Guernsey 2nd Jan., 1908. / For the GUERNSEY COMMERCIAL BANKING COMPANY. / One Pound |
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| Comments |
The Guernsey Commercial Banking Company was a short-lived institution that operated under a precarious legal position — Guernsey's banking laws through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were loosely enough framed that private note issue persisted long after it had been extinguished in most of the British Isles. By 1908 this was already an anachronism, the private bank of issue surviving on Channel Island legal autonomy rather than any commercial logic.
Perkins, Bacon & Petch were the dominant security printers of the period, their intaglio work recognizable for its fine engine-turned backgrounds. The company had been printing banknotes and postage stamps since the 1820s and their Channel Island output spans several issuers across Jersey and Guernsey.
P#S171 is among the later dated examples from this issuer before the bank wound down its note-issuing operations entirely.