Catalog
10 Pounds Bank of Ireland
| Issuer | Bank of Ireland |
|---|---|
| Year | 1804 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Upper left corner bears a small oval vignette of Hibernia beneath a crown. The centre of the note carries a large ornate letterpress word-value panel reading 'TEN' in bold script, with the promise-to-pay text arranged in manuscript and printed letterpress across the face. The issuing authority is stated in formal script at lower right, with the date of issue and place of issue — Dublin — inscribed in manuscript. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | I Promise to pay ... or bearer on Demand the sum of Ten Pounds Dublin the 13 day of Oct 1804 For the Gov.r and Comp.a of the Bank of Ireland |
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The Bank of Ireland received its charter in 1783, making it one of the earliest chartered banks in the British Isles, predating Catholic Emancipation and operating under considerable constitutional restriction. By 1804 the bank had recently moved into its permanent home in the former Parliament House on College Green — a building vacated when the Acts of Union dissolved the Irish Parliament in 1800 and transferred legislative authority to Westminster. The irony of a bank occupying the seat of a dissolved legislature was not lost on contemporaries.
Early nineteenth-century Bank of Ireland notes of this denomination are genuinely scarce. The ten-pound figure put these well above everyday transactions, limiting circulation to merchants and landed interests. Attrition among high-denomination early paper was severe.