Talk:History of the British penny (1714–1901)

Pre-merge archive: Talk:History of the British penny (1837-1901)

1797 penny
It would appear I have one of the 1797 pennies, passed to me from my father, the date is worn off, so I guess it won't be a valuable one, but it's cool to even have something so old. It has Brittannia facing left, it has G (L?) ...I I I D (G or C) and a king portrait facing R, the profile is distinctive in that the profile is almost a straight line from forehead to nose-tip

I would guess that its George III. --THobern 16:40, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

The pennies of King William IV (1830–1837) are very similar to his predecessors', also being engraved by William Wyon. The king's head faces right, inscribed GULIELMUS IIII DEI GRATIA date, while the reverse is identical to the George IV penny. Pennies were minted in 1831, 1834, and 1837 (there is a report of a single example dated 1836, but this is regarded as semi-mythical). The small mintages of William's pennies makes finding a nice one very difficult.

I found the above statement on one of the pages of this website. It says there were none made in 1836. I have one that has the date 1836 stamped on it. However, the number 3 is upside down. Can anyone shed light on this?

Lighthouse
"until 1895 there was a lighthouse to Britannia's left and a ship to her right": an interpretation board at Smeaton's Lighthouse, now on Plymouth Hoe, claims that the lighthouse on the obverse of the pre-decimal British penny is the Eddystone Lighthouse, a recognition of the pride of the British people of the technical achivement of erecting this innovative building. Is this correct? Does the lighthouse on the old penny represent the Eddystone? Vernon White '''. . . Talk''' 07:51, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Tuppence Disambiguation
Why does Tuppence (Disambiguation) redirect to HoBP? I was looking for Tuppence used as a girls name which I think it has been a few times. Can't see any discussion over this previously. Double Think 08:37, 19 December 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luv2cucum (talk • contribs)
 * No idea. The Tuppence (disambiguation) page seems to have been created by a bot in 2010, and the only other time it was edited was by another bot. Just goes to prove that "machine intelligence" is a contradiction in terms. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 22:28, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Boulton and Soho Mint
"Even though pennies were struck first, reserving the twopences for later, the Soho Mint had trouble stamping such large pieces of copper, and Boulton built a new mint at Soho, where by 1799, each press was striking 60 pennies a minute."

Would it not be clearer to say "..the existing Soho Mint had trouble.." if that is what is intended to be implied?—not that I know of Boulton constructing more than one. Harfarhs (talk) 20:25, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't recall the specifics of the construction, but that seems like good language.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:17, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Twopence, threepence and fourpence
"The Roman numeral I on the coins dated from the reign of James II, and was at first intended to denote the King's initial in Latin (IACOBUS) but was kept a Roman numeral when the twopence, threepence, and fourpence were given Arabic numerals under William and Mary."

I added one link here; I wanted to add three, but the articles Twopence (British pre-decimal coin) and Fourpence (British coin) relate only to specific coinages well outside the time period indicated in the paragraph. (Indeed, the twopence article seems to say that there was no such coin before 1797.) Perhaps "fourpence" could be wikilinked with Groat (coin), but I did not feel confident enough that that was the intended meaning. Assuming that the text here is correct, this problem, if it be a problem, of course relates chiefly to the other articles and not this one about pennies. Harfarhs (talk) 11:28, 12 October 2018 (UTC)