Security Printing Ltd printing facility, owned by
De La Rue, which prints Bank of England banknotes In 1921, the Bank of England gained a legal monopoly on the issue of banknotes in England and Wales, a process that started with the
Bank Charter Act 1844 when the rights of other banks to issue notes was restricted. The bank issued its first banknotes in 1694, although before 1745 they were written for irregular amounts, rather than predefined multiples of a pound. It tended to be times of war, which put inflationary pressure on the British economy, that led to greater note issue. In 1759, during the
Seven Years' War, when the lowest-value note issued by the Bank was
£20, a
£10 note was issued for the first time. In 1793, during the
war with revolutionary France, the Bank issued the first
£5 note. Four years later,
£1 and £2 notes appeared, although not on a permanent basis. Notes did not become entirely machine-printed and payable to the bearer until 1855. At the start of the First World War, the government issued £1 and 10/– Treasury notes to replace the
sovereign and
half-sovereign gold coins. The first coloured banknotes were issued in 1928, and were also the first notes to be printed on both sides. The
Second World War saw a reversal in the trend of warfare creating more notes: to
combat forgery, higher denomination notes (some as high as £1,000) were removed from circulation. There are no Welsh banknotes in circulation; Bank of England notes are used throughout Wales. The last Welsh banknotes were withdrawn in 1908 upon the closure of the last Welsh bank, the
North and South Wales Bank. An attempt was made in 1969 by a Welsh banker to revive
Welsh banknotes, but the venture was short-lived and the notes did not enter general circulation, surviving today only as a collectors' curiosity. All Bank of England notes issued since Series C in 1960 through June 2024 depict
Elizabeth II, who was
monarch at the time, on the obverse side, in full view facing left; her image also appears as a hidden
watermark, facing right; recent issues have the anti-photocopier security
EURion constellation around. In September 2022, following the
death of Elizabeth II, speculation arose as to when the Bank of England would begin replacing banknotes with her portrait on for ones with the portrait of
Charles III. After the end of the mourning period, the Bank announced that the portrait of the King intended for use on its banknotes would be released by the end of 2022. New banknotes with the portrait of the King would circulate alongside existing banknotes with the image of the late Queen for an unspecified period. Images of the revised notes featuring a new portrait of the King, as well as his
personal cypher, were released by the Bank of England on 20 December 2022, and entered circulation on 5 June 2024. The portrait of Charles III is based on a photograph taken when he was in his early 60s. The Bank of England has a set of criteria for choosing characters for banknotes – initially, it looks at who has previously featured, to allow for a reflection of the diversity of society. It does not accept fictional characters, or any living people with the exception of the reigning monarch, but instead aims for individuals that are both widely admired, and are considered to have made an important contribution to British society and culture. The final criterion is that the individual has an easily recognisable portrait available for use. This does not need to be a painting, as, up to , there have been two sculptures and two photographs used.
Historical figures }
Series D In the mid-1960s, shortly after the introduction of Series C, the Bank of England proposed to introduce a new banknote series featuring people from British history. In addition to enhancing the appearance of banknotes, the complexity of the new designs was intended to make counterfeiting harder. The task of designing the new Series D notes was given to the Bank's new in-house designer,
Harry Eccleston, who not only designed the notes themselves, but also created three individual portraits of the Queen. It was initially envisaged that all of the denominations of notes then in circulation would be issued under Series D. To that end, a Series D
10/– note was designed, featuring
Sir Walter Raleigh, and which would become the 50 pence note upon decimalisation, and intended to be the first of the new series to be issued. However, inflation had shorted the estimated lifespan of the note to roughly five months in circulation. As a result, the new note was not introduced, and the 10/- note was instead replaced with a
50p coin in 1969. Instead, the £20 note was the first Series D note to enter circulation in 1970, with
William Shakespeare on the reverse. Runaway inflation through the 1970s also considerably eroded the lifespan of the £1 note, and the Series D £1 note, featuring
Sir Isaac Newton, was discontinued in 1984, having been replaced by a
coin the year before, and was officially withdrawn from circulation in 1988. Nonetheless, all banknotes, regardless of when they were withdrawn from circulation, may be presented at the Bank of England where they will be exchanged for current banknotes. Other banks may also decide to exchange old banknotes, but they are under no obligation to do so.
Series E When Series E was introduced in 1990, a new portrait of the Queen was commissioned based on photographs by Don Ford, one of the Bank of England's photographers. In this portrait, intended for all of the Series E banknotes, the Queen is shown wearing the
Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara, Queen Alexandra's cluster earrings and Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee necklace. Two different Series E sets were produced, each with a different set of historical figures - the first Series E banknote was the £5 featuring George Stephenson, followed by the £20 (Michael Faraday), the £10 (Charles Dickens) and the £50 (Sir John Houblon). The three lower denominations were replaced by the Series E (Variant) series, featuring Elizabeth Fry, Charles Darwin and Sir Edward Elgar; the £50 note was not replaced during this period.
Series F The Series F banknotes consists of the £20 note introduced in 2007 and the £50 introduced in 2011; no £5 or £10 notes were designed for this series. Its launch was announced on 29 October 2006 by the Governor of the Bank of England. These notes were withdrawn on 30 September 2022, after which they are only exchangeable for Series G banknotes. The first of these new notes, a £20 note, features the Scottish economist
Adam Smith, the first Scot to appear on an English note. (The first non-Englishman,
Anglo-Irish Field Marshal
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, appeared on the Series D £5 in 1971.) Smith also features on £50 notes issued by the
Clydesdale Bank. Previous issues of Bank of England £20 notes were known to have suffered from a higher incidence of counterfeiting (276,000 out of 290,000 cases detected in 2007) than any other denomination. The note, which also includes enhanced security features, entered circulation on 13 March 2007. The next new Series F banknote, the
£50 note, entered circulation on 2 November 2011. It is the first Bank of England banknote to feature two Britons on the reverse: James Watt (another Scotsman) and Matthew Boulton. The £5 and £10 notes were never issued.
Series G In 2011, the Bank of England announced plans to begin introducing a new set of banknotes, which were to become Series G. As part of the initial consultation, the bank obtained opinion on whether the planned new banknotes should continue to be made from banknote paper, or if they should be polymer. Having made the decision to switch to polymer banknotes, the first note of Series G, the polymer £5 note, entered circulation on 13 September 2016; the £10 note on 14 September 2017; the £20 note on 20 February 2020; and the £50 on 23 June 2021. The material used to make the banknotes is
biaxially oriented polypropylene. In April 2013, the Bank of England announced that its next planned new note issue, intended to be the £5 note in 2016, would feature former British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill. The selection of Churchill to replace
Elizabeth Fry raised some debate about the representation of women on British banknotes, with critics raising concerns that Bank of England notes would portray exclusively male figures, other than
Elizabeth II who appears on every sterling coin and Bank of England note. In July 2013 it was announced that the Series F £10 note design would bear a portrait of 19th century author
Jane Austen. In 2015, the Bank announced that they were accepting suggestions from the public for a figure from the visual arts to appear on the £20 note to replace Adam Smith, with the new note to be introduced in 2020. In April 2016, it was announced that
J. M. W. Turner had been selected to appear on the new £20 note. In September 2013 the Bank of England opened a period of public consultation about the introduction of polymer, or plastic, banknotes, which would be introduced into circulation from 2016 if the proposals were supported. The polymer notes will be "around 15% smaller" than the notes being replaced. Following the consultation, in December 2013, the Bank confirmed that plastic or polymer notes would be brought into circulation in 2016 with the introduction of the £5 note featuring Sir Winston Churchill. A spokesman for
LINK, the company that operates many of the cash machines in the United Kingdom, said there would need to be significant investment as machines would need to be altered to fit the polymer £5 banknotes, which would be smaller than the previous ones. The Jane Austen polymer £10 note went into circulation in September 2017. The £20 shows
J. M. W. Turner (from a
self-portrait), the quote "Light is therefore colour" from an 1818 lecture by Turner, and a view of
The Fighting Temeraire. In March 2018, the
Treasury began a consultation looking at the potential withdrawal of the £50 note, as well as the
one and
two pence coins, on the basis that they are used significantly less than other denominations, with an additional rationale over the £50 note being the perception in the UK of its use in
money laundering,
tax evasion and other financial crime, despite the demand for it overseas. The Series F version was introduced in 2011, while its predecessor was in circulation for twenty years, so there was some consideration to withdrawing the £50 note entirely as a way of combatting tax evasion, and the fact that cash transactions using such a high value note are becoming increasingly rare. However, in October 2018 the Bank of England announced plans to introduce a Series G polymer £50 note, following the review by the government. The new £50 note is planned for introduction once the Series G £20 note featuring J. M. W. Turner is released. In July 2019, it was announced that the new note would feature computer pioneer
Alan Turing, from a photograph taken by the
Elliott & Fry photographic studio in 1951, a table of formulae from Turing's 1936 work
On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem, an image of the
Automatic Computing Engine Pilot machine, technical drawings of the British
bombe machine, the quote "This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be" from an interview Turing gave to
The Times on 11 June 1949, and a
ticker tape showing Turing's date of birth in
binary code.
UK wildlife and birds Series H On 2 July 2025, the Bank of England launched a consultation intended to garner public views of what should appear on the next planned series of banknotes. This opened the possibility that the use of historical figures, the choice of whom for individual series has sometimes proven controversial, may be ended. On 11 March 2026, The Bank of England announced that British wildlife and
British birds would feature on new Bank of England notes, after 60% of respondents in the consultation supported the theme. A further public consultation will invite suggestions for the specific animals to be depicted.
High-value notes Not since 1945 have notes with a higher value than £50 been issued for general circulation by the Bank of England, although banks in
Channel Islands,
Scotland and
Northern Ireland still use £100 notes. However, the Bank of England does produce
higher-value notes that are used to maintain parity with Scottish and Northern Irish notes. Banknotes issued by Scottish and Northern Irish banks have to be backed pound for pound by Bank of England notes (other than a small amount representing the currency in circulation in 1845), and special £1 million and £100 million notes are used for this purpose. Their design is based on the old Series A notes. ==Scotland and Northern Ireland==