Origin .
Medieval Latin inscription:
ELFRED[US] REXX ("Alfred the King")|alt=Drawing of a coin showing a portrait of Alfred the Great The history of coins in
Great Britain can be traced back to the second century BC when they were introduced by
Celtic tribes from across the
English Channel. The first record of coins being minted in Britain is attributed to
Kentish tribes such as the
Cantii who around 80–60 BC imitated those of
Marseille through
casting instead of
hammering. After the
Romans began their
invasion of Britain in AD 43, they set up mints across the land, which produced
Roman coins for some 40 years before closing. A mint in
London reopened briefly in 383 until closing swiftly as
Roman rule in Britain came to an end. For the next 200 years, no coins appear to have been minted in Britain until the emergence of
English kingdoms in the sixth and seventh centuries. By 650, as many as 30 mints are recorded across Britain.
1279 to 1672 in 1647|alt=1847 drawing of the Tower of London on the River Thames In 1279, the country's numerous mints were unified under a single system whereby control was centralised to the mint within the
Tower of London. Mints outside
London were reduced, with only a few local and
episcopal mints continuing to operate.
Pipe rolls containing the financial records of the London mint show an expenditure of and records of
timber bought for workshops. Individual roles at the mint were well established by 1464. The master worker was charged with hiring engravers and managing
moneyers, while the Warden was responsible for witnessing the delivery of dies. A specialist mint board was set up in 1472 to enact a 23 February indenture that vested the mint's responsibilities into three main roles: a
warden, a
master and
comptroller. In the early 16th century, mainland Europe was in the middle of an
economic expansion, but England was suffering from financial difficulties brought on by excessive government spending. By the 1540s, wars with France and Scotland led
Henry VIII to enact
The Great Debasement, which saw the amount of precious metal in coins significantly reduced. In order to strengthen control of the country's currency,
monasteries were dissolved, which effectively ended major coin production outside
London. In 1603, the
Union of Crowns of England and Scotland under King
James I led to a partial union of the two kingdoms' currencies, the
pound Scots and the
pound sterling. Because Scotland had heavily debased its silver coins, a Scots mark was worth just pence while an English mark was worth 6 shillings 8 pence (80 pence). To bridge the difference between the values, unofficial supplementary
token coins, often made from
lead, were made by unauthorised minters across the country. By 1612, there were 3,000 such unlicensed mints producing these tokens, none of them paying anything to the government. The Royal Mint, not wanting to divert manpower from minting more profitable
gold and
silver coins, hired outside agent
Lord Harington who, under licence, started issuing
copper farthings in 1613. Private licenses to mint these coins were revoked in 1644, which led traders to resume minting their own supplementary tokens. In 1672, the Royal Mint finally took over the production of
copper coinage.
Civil War mints Civil War half-crown|alt=Drawing of the reverse and obverse of a Charles I Civil War half-crown coin In 1630, sometime before the outbreak of the
English Civil War, England signed a treaty with
Spain that ensured a steady supply of silver
bullion to the
Tower mint. Additional branch mints to aid the one in London were set up, including one at
Aberystwyth Castle in Wales. In 1642,
parliament seized control of the Tower mint. After
Charles I tried to arrest the
Five Members, he was forced to flee
London and established at least 16 emergency mints across the
British Isles in
Carlisle,
Chester,
Colchester,
Cork,
Dublin,
Edinburgh,
Exeter,
Newark,
Pontefract,
Salisbury,
Scarborough, parts of
Cornwall including
Truro,
Weymouth,
Worcester, and
York (see also
siege money). After raising the royal standard in
Nottingham, marking the beginning of the civil war, Charles called on
loyalist mining engineer
Thomas Bushell, the owner of a mint and silver mine in
Aberystwyth, to move his operations to the royalist-held
Shrewsbury, possibly within the grounds of
Shrewsbury Castle. However, this mint was short-lived, operating for no more than three months before Charles ordered Bushell to relocate the mint to his headquarters in the royal capital of
Oxford. The new Oxford mint was established on 15 December 1642 in
New Inn Hall, the present site of
St Peter's College. There, silver plates and foreign coins were melted down and, in some cases, just hammered into shape to produce coins quickly. Bushell was appointed the mint's warden and master-worker, and he laboured alongside notable engravers
Nicholas Briot,
Thomas Rawlins and
Nicholas Burghers, the last of whom was appointed Graver of Seals, Stamps, and Medals in 1643. When
Prince Rupert took control of Oxford that same year, Bushell was ordered to move to
Bristol Castle, where he continued minting coins until it fell to parliamentary control on 11 September 1645, effectively ending Bushell's involvement in the civil war mints. In November 1642, the king ordered royalist
MP Richard Vyvyan to build one or more mints in Cornwall, where he was instructed to mint coins from whatever bullion could be obtained and deliver them to
Ralph Hopton, a commander of royalist troops in the region. Vyvyan built a mint in
Truro and was its Master until 1646, when it was captured by
parliamentarians. In December 1642, the parliamentarians set up a mint in nearby
Exeter, which had been under parliamentary control since the beginning of the war and was under constant threat of attack by
loyalist troops. In September 1643, the town was captured by the
Cornish Royalist Army led by
Prince Maurice, leading Vyvyan to move his nearby mint in
Truro to the captured town. The exact location of the mint in Exeter is unknown; however, maps from the time show a street named Old Mint Lane near Friernhay, which was to be the site of a
1696 Recoinage mint. Much less is known about the mint's employees, with only Richard Vyvyan and clerk Thomas Hawkes recorded. 1653 |alt=Photo of a 1653 gold Unite coin |left|alt=Photo of a 1658 silver Crown coin featuring Oliver CromwellFollowing Charles I's execution in 1649, the newly formed
Commonwealth of England established its own set of coins, which for the first time used
English rather than
Latin and were more plainly designed than those issued under the
monarchy. The government invited French engineer
Peter Blondeau, who worked at the
Paris Mint, to come to London in 1649 in the hope of modernising the country's minting process. In France,
hammer-stuck coins had been banned from the Paris Mint since 1639 and replaced with
milled coinage. Blondeau began his testing in May 1651 in
Drury House. He initially produced milled silver
pattern pieces of
half-crowns,
shillings and
sixpences; however rival moneyers continued using the old hammering method. In 1656,
Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell ordered engraver
Thomas Simon to cut a series of dies featuring his
bust and for them to be minted using the new milled method. Few of Cromwell's coins entered circulation; Cromwell died in 1658 and the Commonwealth collapsed two years later. Without Cromwell's backing of milled coinage, Blondeau returned to France, leaving England to continue minting hammer-struck coins.
1660 to 1805 in 1702|alt=Portrait of Isaac Newton from 1702 In 1662, after previous attempts to introduce
milled coinage into Britain had failed, the restored monarch
Charles II recalled
Peter Blondeau to establish a permanent machine-made coinage. Despite the introduction of the newer, milled coins, like the old
hammered coins they suffered heavily from counterfeiting and
clipping. To combat this the text
Decus et tutamen ("An ornament and a safeguard") was added to some coin rims. After the
Glorious Revolution of 1688, when
James II was ousted from power, parliament took over control of the mint from
the Crown, which had until then allowed the mint to act as an independent body producing coins on behalf of the government. Under the patronage of
Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax,
Isaac Newton became the mint's
warden in 1696. His role, intended to be a
sinecure, was taken seriously by Newton, who went about trying to combat the country's growing problems with counterfeiting. By this time, forgeries accounted for 10% of the country's coinage,
clipping was commonplace and the value of the silver in coins had surpassed their
face value.
King William III initiated the
Great Recoinage of 1696 whereby all coins were removed from circulation, and enacted the
Coin Act 1696, making it
high treason to own or possess
counterfeiting equipment. Satellite mints to aid in the recoinage were established in
Bristol,
Chester,
Exeter,
Norwich, and
York, with returned coins being valued by weight, not
face value. The
Acts of Union 1707 united England and Scotland into one country, leading London to take over production of Scotland's currency and thus replacing Scotland's
Pound Scots with the English
Pound sterling. As a result, the Edinburgh mint closed on 4 August 1710. As
Britain's empire continued to expand, so too did the need to supply its coinage. This, along with the need for new mint machinery and cramped conditions within the
Tower of London, led to plans for the mint to move to nearby
East Smithfield.
1805 to 1914 Tower Hill Construction started in 1805 of the new purpose-built mint on Tower Hill, opposite the Tower of London, and it was completed by 1809. In 1812, the move became official: the keys of the old mint were ceremoniously delivered to the
Constable of the Tower. Facing the front of the site stood the Johnson Smirke Building, named for its designer James Johnson and builder
Robert Smirke. Construction was supervised by the architect John Lidbury Poole (father of the famous singer,
Elizabeth Poole). This building was flanked on both sides by gatehouses behind which another building housed the mint's new machinery. Several other smaller buildings were erected, which housed mint officers and staff members. The entire site was protected by a boundary wall patrolled by the Royal Mint's military guard. By 1856, the mint was beginning to prove inefficient: there were irregularities in minted coins' fineness and weight. Instructed by
Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, the Master of the Mint
Thomas Graham was informed that unless the mint could raise its standards and become more economical, it would be broken up and placed under management by contractors. Graham sought advice from German chemist
August Wilhelm von Hofmann, who in turn recommended his student
George Frederick Ansell to resolve the mint's issues. In a letter to the Treasury dated 29 October 1856, Ansell was put forward as a candidate. He was appointed as a temporary clerk on 12 November 1856, with a salary of £120 per year. Upon taking office, Ansell discovered that the weighing of metals at the mint was extremely loose. At the mint, it had been the custom to weigh silver to the nearest and gold to a
pennyweight (0.05 oz); however, these standards meant losses were being made from overvalued metals. In one such case, Ansell delivered 7920.00 oz of gold to the mint, where it was weighed by an official at 7918.15 oz, a difference of 1.85 oz. Requesting a second weighing on a more accurate scale, the bullion was certified to weigh 7919.98 oz, far closer to the previous measurement, which was off by 960
grains. To increase the accuracy of weights, more precise weighing equipment was ordered, and the tolerance was revised to 0.10 oz for silver and 0.01 oz for gold. Between 1856 and 1866, the old scales were gradually removed and replaced with scales made by Messrs. De Grave, Short, and Fanner; winners of an
1862 International Exhibition prize award for work relating to
balances. Ansell also noticed a loss of gold during the manufacturing process. He found that 15 to 20 ounces could be recovered from the sweep, that is, the leftover burnt rubbish from the minting process, which was often left in open boxes for many months before being removed. Wanting to account for every particle and knowing that it was physically impossible for gold just to disappear, he put down the lost weight to a combination of
oil,
dust, and different types of foreign matter amongst the gold. In 1859, the Royal Mint rejected a batch of gold found to be too brittle for the minting of gold sovereigns. Analysis revealed the presence of small amounts of
antimony,
arsenic and
lead. With Ansell's background in
chemistry, he persuaded the Royal Mint to allow him to experiment with the
alloy, and was ultimately able to produce 167,539 gold
sovereigns. On a second occasion in 1868, it was again discovered that gold coins, this time totalling £500,000 worth, were being produced with inferior gold. Although the standard practice at the mint was for rejected coins (known as brockages) to be melted down, many entered general circulation, and the mint was forced to return thousands of ounces of gold to the
Bank of England. Although Ansell offered to re-melt the substandard coins, his offer was rejected, causing a row between him and senior mint chiefs, which ultimately led to him being removed from his position at the mint. After the high-level practice as deputy engraver in the Royal Mint, Charles Wiener went then to Lisbon in 1864 as chief engraver to the Mint of Portugal. In 1863 he made a commemorative medal for Prince Albert (1819–1861), consort of Queen Victoria. (Victoria and Albert Museum).
Royal Mint Refinery After relocating to its new home on Tower Hill, the Mint came under increased scrutiny of how it dealt with unrefined gold that had entered the country. The
Master of the Mint had been responsible for overseeing the practice since the position's inception in the 14th century. However, the refinery process proved too costly and suffered from a lack of accountability from the master. A
Royal Commission was set up in 1848 to address these issues; it recommended that the refinery process be
outsourced to an external agency, thereby removing the refining process from the mint's responsibilities. The opportunity to oversee the Mint's refinery was taken up by
Anthony de Rothschild, a descendant of the
Rothschild family and heir to the
multinational financial company
N M Rothschild & Sons. Rothschild secured a lease from the government in January 1852, purchasing equipment and premises adjacent to the Royal Mint on 19 Royal Mint Street under the name of
Royal Mint Refinery.
Colonial expansion As Britain's influence as a
world power expanded, with colonies being established abroad, a greater need for currency led to the Royal Mint opening satellite branches overseas. This need first arose in the then-
Colony of New South Wales, as the black-market trade in gold during and following the
1851 Australian gold rush threatened to undermine the colony's economy. In 1851 the colony's
Legislative Council sent
Queen Victoria a petition seeking a local mint for
Sydney, and in 1853 the Queen issued an
Order in Council providing for the establishment of the
Sydney Branch of the Royal Mint. The Royal Mint's Superintendent of Coining travelled to Australia to oversee its establishment on
Macquarie Street within the southern wing of
Sydney Hospital, where it opened in 1855. Production increased quickly:
assayer's notes from 29 October 1855 indicate that the mint's Bullion Office had purchased of unrefined gold in the preceding week alone, The Melbourne and Perth branches had capabilities superior to those in Sydney, and they took over production responsibilities for Australia when the Sydney branch closed after 72 years of operation at the end of 1926. In Canada, which had been
under British rule since 1763, British coins circulated alongside those of other nations until 1858, when London started producing coins for the newly established
Canadian dollar. As Canada developed in 1890, calls were made for a mint to be built in
Ottawa to facilitate the country's gold mines. The new mint was opened on 2 January 1908 by
Lord Grey, producing coins for circulation, including
Ottawa Mint sovereigns. In 1931, under the
Statute of Westminster, the mint came under the control of the
Government of Canada and was subsequently renamed the
Royal Canadian Mint.A fifth branch of the Royal Mint was established in
Mumbai (Bombay),
India on 21 December 1917 as part of a wartime effort. It struck sovereigns from 15 August 1918 until 22 April 1919 but closed in May 1919. A sixth and final overseas mint was established in the
Union of South Africa in
Pretoria on 1 January 1923, producing £83,114,575 worth of
sovereigns in its lifetime. As South Africa began cutting ties with Britain, the mint closed on 30 June 1941 but was later reopened as the
South African Mint. Although London's Royal Mint officially controlled just six mints, many more independent mints were set up in parts of the
British Empire. At
New Westminster in
British Columbia, the
British Columbia gold rushes led to a mint being established in 1862 by
Francis George Claudet, under Governor
James Douglas. It produced a few gold and silver coins before being shut down in 1862 to aid the city of
Victoria in becoming the region's
provincial capital. On 26 February 1864, an
Order in Council requested the founding of an independent mint (
Hong Kong Mint) in
British Hong Kong to issue silver and bronze coins. But this mint was short-lived, due to its coins being heavily debased, causing significant losses. The site was sold to
Jardine Matheson in 1868, and the mint machinery was sold to the Japanese Mint in
Osaka.
1914 to 1966 In 1914, as war broke out in Europe,
Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George instructed that gold coins be removed from circulation to help pay for the war effort. The government started to issue £1 and 10-shilling Treasury notes as replacements, paving the way for Britain to leave the gold standard in 1931. The
Bombay Mint sovereign was the £1 coin. From 1928, the
Irish Free State (later the Republic of Ireland) issued
its own coins. The Royal Mint produced these until Ireland established its own
Currency Centre in Dublin in 1978. During World War II, the Mint was important in ensuring people were paid for their services with
hard currency rather than banknotes. Under
Operation Bernhard, the
Nazis planned to collapse the
British economy by flooding the country with forged notes, leading the
Bank of England to stop issuing banknotes of £10 and above. To meet these demands, the Mint doubled its output so that by 1943 it was minting around 700 million coins a year despite the constant threat of being bombed. The Deputy Master of the Mint, John Craig, recognised the dangers to the Mint and introduced several measures to ensure the Mint could continue to operate in the event of a disaster. Craig added emergency water supplies, reinforced the Mint's basement to act as an
air-raid shelter and even accepted employment of women for the first time. For most of the war, the mint managed to escape most of the destruction of
the Blitz, but in December 1940 three members of staff were killed in an
air raid. Around the same time, an auxiliary mint was set up at
Pinewood Studios,
Buckinghamshire, which had been requisitioned for the war effort. Staff and machinery from Tower Hill were moved to the site, which started production in June 1941 and operated for the duration of the war. Over the course of the war, the Royal Mint was hit on several occasions, and at one point was put out of commission for three weeks. As technology changed with the introduction of electricity and demand continued to grow, the rebuilding process continued so that by the 1960s, little of the original mint remained, apart from Smirke's 1809 building and its gatehouses at the front.
Since 1966 Relocation to Wales |alt=Exterior of the Royal Mint building located in Llantrisant, Wales On 1 March 1966, the government announced plans to
decimalise the nation's currency, thereby requiring the withdrawal of millions of coins and the re-minting of new ones. At its current site on Tower Hill, the mint had suffered from lack of space for many years, and it would be inadequate to meet the anticipated high demand a recoinage would entail. A possible move to a more suitable site had been discussed as far back as 1870, when Deputy Master of the Mint Charles Fremantle had recommended it in his first annual report. At the time, it had been suggested that the valuable land at Tower Hill could be sold to finance the purchase of land at nearby
Whitefriars and pay for a new mint building. However, after many years of subsequent debate in Parliament it had been decided that improvements could be made to the existing site at Tower Hill. With
Decimal Day set for 1971, the government quickly decided where to establish the new mint. Over twenty sites were considered including suggestions for Scotland and Northern Ireland; however, the small Welsh town of
Llantrisant, northwest of
Cardiff, was eventually chosen. Work on the new mint began in August 1967 with the construction of a
blank treatment plant and a plant for striking. This first phase of the mint was formally opened on 17 December 1968 in the presence of
Queen Elizabeth II,
Prince Philip, and
Prince Charles. There had been fears that the Royal Family would face protests because some Welsh people were unhappy about the
Investiture of Prince Charles as
Prince of Wales; however, no such protests materialised. The second phase of construction began in 1973 and included the addition of a means to mint coins from raw metals; thus completing the full minting process. Upon completion the final cost for the land, buildings and plant came to £8 million. Coin minting gradually shifted to the new site over the next seven years, and the last coin, a gold sovereign, was struck in London in November 1975.
Financial difficulties After moving to Wales, the mint struggled to be profitable as the Western world fell into a
deep recession during the early 1970s. To combat a rising national debt, the mint was established as a
trading fund on 1 April 1975, which required it to become self-financing. This measure proved successful, and the mint became more profitable through heavy exports. In April 1990, the mint became an Executive Agency; however, by 2001, the mint had reported its first annual loss: a result attributed to only securing 5% of new
euro coin production rather than the projected 20%. Despite this, the mint began diversifying its product range by offering items outside its usual coin-related merchandise. Around this time, the mint was selling different types of jewellery, commemorative plates and figurines, eventually creating its own
Royal Mint Classics range of collectible goods. This part of the business proved popular in attracting new customers, but it suffered from poor product development. Its products included a
hip flask with an embedded
£2 coin, an
Edinburgh Crystal clock combined with a
millennium Crown, and a
Wedgwood plate featuring
Britannia. In 2007, the Mint decided to resume its focus on coins, downsizing non-coin related business and discontinuing its Classics range. The
2008 financial crisis was another financial blow: a
rescue package costing £500 billion was announced to help stabilise Britain's banking system. This led to fears that the government would attempt to finance the cost by selling off state-owned organisations. In his 2009 pre-budget report, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling stated that the Treasury would "explore the potential benefits of alternative future models for the Royal Mint". The recommendation was met with outrage by unions and opposition parties in parliament, who called it the "selling off the family silver" and said it would result in job losses. In contrast, the chief executive of the mint, Andrew Stafford, welcomed the proposal, saying that it would lead to further growth and secure the future of the business. On 31 December 2009, rather than being fully privatised, the mint ceased to be an
executive agency and its assets were vested in a
limited company,
Royal Mint Ltd. The owner of the new company became The Royal Mint trading fund, which itself continued to be owned by
HM Treasury. As its sole shareholder, the mint pays an annual dividend of £4 million to the Treasury, with the remaining profits being reinvested into the mint. In 2015, Chancellor of the Exchequer
George Osborne announced a £20 billion
privatisation drive to raise funds, with the Royal Mint being up for sale alongside other institutions including the
Met Office and
Companies House. In the 21st century cash was becoming less commonly used, with no coins minted, for the first time, in 2024, and the Mint was seeking new sources of revenue such as its "886" jewellery line. 4,700 gold, silver and bronze medals were produced by the Mint; each medal was struck 15 times with 900 tonnes of force. In addition to securing the medal product contract, the Mint held a competition to design a series of commemorative
50p coins that would enter general circulation before the event. The Mint received over 30,000 entries, with a further 17,000 from a children's competition on the television programme
Blue Peter. In all, a total of 29 designs featuring a sport were selected by the Mint; the youngest designer was just 9 years old. A £2 coin commemorating London's
handover to Rio de Janeiro was also released in 2012. ;The Royal Mint Experience In April 2014, the Mint announced plans to develop a visitor centre in Llantrisant, where members of the public could go on a guided tour of the facility and learn about the mint's history. The development contract, estimated to be worth £7.7 million, was awarded to construction firm
ISG and design consultant
Mather & Co., who had previously designed the
Norwegian Olympic Museum, as well as a handful of visitor attractions for sports clubs including
Chelsea F.C.,
Manchester City F.C.,
FC Porto, and the
Springboks. To fund the development, a grant of £2.3 million was provided by the
Welsh Government towards the attraction which aimed to attract 200,000 visitors a year to the area. By May 2016, two years after its announcement, the attraction, designed by Rio Architects and now named
Royal Mint Experience, opened to the public at a final cost of £9 million. The visitor centre includes an interactive museum, a view of the factory floor, an education centre, and a press where visitors can strike their own souvenir
50 pence coin. On display at the centre are more than 80,000 artefacts, including
Olympic medals, a
pattern coin of
Edward VIII, a
Janvier reducing machine and a selection of
trial plates.
Since 2014 In the same month, the mint took in 48 tonnes of silver recovered from the shipwreck of the
SS Gairsoppa (torpedoed in 1941), which was used to produce limited edition coins. In 2015, after nearly 50 years, the mint began producing its own line of
bullion bars and
coins under its revived
Royal Mint Refinery brand. Then in 2016, the mint announced plans for
Royal Mint Gold (RMG), a
digital gold currency that uses
blockchain to trade and invest in
gold. However, this project was cancelled in 2018. The Royal Mint, in February 2020, listed its first financial product: the Royal Mint Physical Gold Commodity
Exchange-traded fund (ETF): RMAU. It is listed on the
London Stock Exchange and
Deutsche Börse. RMAU is the first gold ETF backed 100% by the
London Bullion Market Association responsible sourcing programme. Investors can also convert RMAU into coins and gold bars. The Royal Mint partnered with
white label ETF firm HANetf.
Jewellery line The Mint, seeking to diversify, launched a line of sustainable luxury hand-made jewellery, 886 by The Royal Mint, in 2022, selling online and from a shop in London's
Burlington Arcade. The collection uses gold recovered from electronic waste and other recycled sources. In 2024, it was expecting to become profitable the following year. == Operations ==