Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
Shrewsbury Halfpenny 1793
| Issuer | Salop Woollen Manufactory |
|---|---|
| Year | 1793 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 1/2 Penny (1⁄480) |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Log in to see details |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Draped bust of King Alfred the Great facing left, depicted as an elderly bearded figure wearing a Saxon-style hood or cowl, rendered in high relief with fine engraving. The effigy is set within an ornamental wreath of oak branches bearing acorns and foliage, tied at the base with a ribbon, the whole enclosed by a finely milled border. The field is plain, allowing the portrait to dominate the design. The legend ALFRED THE GREAT appears on the edge rather than in the obverse field, consistent with the Conder token tradition. The artistic style reflects the late 18th-century interest in Anglo-Saxon historical subjects as symbols of English liberty and industry. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | ALFRED THE GREAT |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse script | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Log in to see details |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | Log in to see details |
| Additional information |
The Salop Woollen Manufactory token was issued during the great copper token boom of the early 1790s, when a chronic shortage of regal small change — the Royal Mint having struck virtually no copper coinage since 1775 — forced provincial employers and tradesmen across Britain to produce their own. For a wool manufacturing town like Shrewsbury, paying workers in usable fractions of currency was a practical necessity, not a commercial novelty.
Dalton & Hamer 427 is among the more straightforward Shropshire pieces, without the contested die marriages that complicate attribution in some of the more prolifically reissued Midlands tokens.