Stories and Articles

Pre decimal currency in Britain before 1971 ...

by Fran Slade

The children of today do not know how lucky they are having 100 small pence to the £1 making additions and subtractions so easy. In my day we had most peculiar currency for there were 240 very large copper pennies to the £1 or 480 half pennies, and even 960 farthings to the £1. Twelve old pennies made up one silver shilling, two old sixpenny pieces or 4 three penny pieces made up one silver shilling, there were 20 shillings to the £1, and we even had a two shilling piece known as a florin, and two shillings and six pence known as half crowns, a full crown being a fi ve shilling piece. We also had paper notes of 10/- (ten shillings) and £1 notes.

So imagine having to add up the following:-

and sometimes there were half pennies and farthings to contend with as well as guineas which were coins of £1. 1 shilling, I do not know how we managed with such complicated monies. In even earlier times there were groats being 4 pence and nobles being 6 shillings and 8 pence written 6/8d, being one third of a £1. Obviously in days gone by this was quite a large sum of money for the Noble was a gold coin and many people left one Noble to the church or to the poor of the parish in their wills.