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20 Pounds
| Issuer | The Natal Bank Limited |
|---|---|
| Year | 1903 |
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| Currency | Pound sterling (1694-date) |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | ESTABLISHED 1854. INCORPORATED BY CHARTER 1858. THE NATAL BANK LIMITED We Promise to pay the Bearer on Demand at our Office here the Sum of TWENTY POUNDS Sterling value received HARRISMITH, ORANGE RIVER COLONY. 1st OCTOBER 1903. FOR The Natal Bank Limited. MANAGER. CANCELLED BRADBURY WILKINSON & CO. 68 BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE, LONDON. |
| Reverse description | The reverse is printed entirely in blue, with an intricate all-over guilloche design of interlocking rosettes and lathe-work panels filling the field. A central oval cartouche in intaglio carries the denomination 'TWENTY POUNDS' in bold serif lettering, flanked by elaborate engine-turned scrollwork. The bank name 'THE NATAL BANK LIMITED' is distributed across the upper and lower margins, with the numeral '20' repeated in each of the four corners within ornate medallions. |
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| Comments |
The Natal Bank Limited was incorporated in 1854 and operated as one of the principal commercial banks serving the Colony of Natal through the turbulent years of the Anglo-Boer War and its aftermath. By 1903, the bank was handling reconstruction finance across a region still absorbing the consequences of wartime disruption to trade and agriculture.
Bradbury Wilkinson produced notes of consistently high intaglio quality, and the £20 denomination would have seen extremely limited circulation — a sum equivalent to several months' wages for most colonial workers. High-value notes of this type frequently survived in better condition simply because fewer hands touched them, though the Natal Bank itself was absorbed into the National Bank of South Africa in 1914, at which point remaining stocks were called in.
Surviving examples of P#S465D are genuinely scarce.