Countermarked coins used in England
In the late eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries there was a chronic shortage of British coins. Using Scotland as an example, Adam Smith estimated that the total circulating coins in 1707 was just over one million pounds sterling in value. By 1776, the year of the publication of The Wealth of Nations, his calculations suggested that the gold and silver coin incirculation - in a greatly expanded Scottish economy - might only account for some half a million pounds. The principal reason was that the market price for silver was higher than the Royal Mint was authorised to pay.
Britain needed more silver coin and the answer to this problem lay in the vast number of foreign coins, mostly eight reales, which captured in war or acquired through peaceful commerce, filled the vaults of the Bank of England and were available as a regular commocity on the bullion market. In 1797 Spanish dollars were stamped, by authority of the Bank of England, with the oval punch containing the bust of George III which was used to mark silverware.
A number of private companies also countermarked dollars with their own marks which recycled the foreign coins as British tokens. Harrington Manville's Tokens of the Industrial Revolution Foreign Silver Coins Countermarked for use in Great Britain, c. 1787-1828, gives an historical account of the cities, towns and hamlets which became the places for issuing such countermarked coins, following that with detailed comments on the issuers, and a catalogue of recorded examples.
When the great silver shortage ended, almost all of the countermarked coins were exchanged for official coin, and melted.
L. B.
KM- ; Manville 108 on a counterfeit 8r 1792 Mo FM (Noonans auction of Eric Hodge Collection, 29 September 2026, lot 6101)
This counterfeit coin, from an unknown location, is countermarked L B 49, with an additional countermark T H N to the right.
Cark Cotton Mill, Cartmel, Lancashire
KM-; Manville101 4/6 on 8r 1777 Mo FM (Noonans auction of Eric Hodge Collection, 29 September 2026, lot 6089)
Cark Cotton MiIl, built for James Stockdale & Co. 1782, destroyed by fire 1935. Photo c. 1880
Cark lies about six miles south of Lake Windermere in the Lake District, fifteen miles from Lancaster and 26O miles to the northwest of London.
In 1784 James Stockdale acquired the OId Cark forge together with watercourses and other land on which to build a cotton spinning works. On 9 May 1785, James Stockdale and four other men signed articles of partnership in the business of 'buying, spinning, manufacturing and selling of cotton.' The mill, together with 'divers dwellinghouses, warehouses and other necessary works' were by then in place and production probably began very close to the date the partnership agreement was signed.
Thackery, Stockdale and Company, under which Cark Cotton Works operated, was an alliance of capital (four merchants) and practical experience provided by a cabinetmaker. The merchants were James Stockdale, Joseph Thackery and Joseph Ryder both from Manchester and Thomas Satterthwaite of Lancaster.
James Stockdale, who lived from 1724 to 1806, was a thoroughgoing man of business, and despite his advancing years, was willing to add cotton spinning to his wide range of activities. These included lands in the North American colonies at Suffolk in Virginia, which lands he Iost during the War of American Independence, a West Indian plantation, shipping, shipbuilding, mining, the operation of blast furnaces and iron forges and an investment (with John Wilkinson) in Perier Brothers' Works for supplying Paris with waterTransactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society, Vol. LXIV 1964. Article XXIV. The Stockdale family etc. by W.H. Chaloner M.A. Ph.D.pp. 352-358.. Joseph Thackery and Joseph Ryder were both well-known cotton merchants from Manchester.
Thomas Satterthwaite. on his father's death. moved with his family from Leeds to Lancaster, a port then growing rich through the buying and selling of African slaves and its trade with the Caribbean. He became a West Indian merchant, so he and Stockdale were ideally placed for supplying Cark Cotton Works with cotton.
The fifth partner with the practical experience was Edward Hardy from Mossley near Ashton-under-Lyne. He was an engineer at Cark until his death in 1796, and he was given the 'sole and entire direction and management' of the machinery.
The partners put in £3,600 to buy the site and build the mill, Iater described as a large cotton mill, a number of cottages, workshops, engine houses, tails and other races, and no fewer than nine bridges, destroying entirely the rural appearance of the village.'
Throughout the early years the partners spent much time and money on the mill's power supply, contracting with Boulton and Watt in January 1786 for a 'fire engine' to divert water from the tail race into a 'snoring hole' from which it would be pumped back into the dam, so giving a continuous supply of water to the wheel that drove the machinery. One letter dated 18 July 1786 from James Stockdale’s son, Fletcher, to James Watt quotes some very interesting statistics, 'we have not less than upwards of 400 people unemployed and not one fourth of their time at work, which we are obliged to keep constantly in pay and whose wages does not amount to less than £70 or £80 per week.' This is one of the few references to the numbers employed in an early spinning mill, and a quick calculation shows that the average weekly wage of the largely juvenile labour force to be about four shillings.
The Cark Cotton Works was one of the larger mills in Lancashire at this time with up to 3,400 spindles, so the new engine was very necessary.
Stockdale's involvement with both Wilkinson and Boulton & Watt gives rise to speculation about the source of the Cark Cotton Works countermarked dollars. Wilkinson was receiving copper tokens made by Thomas Williams at Anglesey from die engraved by John Gregory Hancock by March 1787, and a specimen was received by Boulton in August 1787. Later Wilkinson had some silver tokens made, and it is speculated that these would have been made by either John Westwood or Thomas Williams. Eventually however Matthew Boulton became involved in the manufacture of Wilkinson's copper tokens from about 1789 or 1790David Vice, The Tokens of John Wilkinson, Format March 1990.
It is therefore quite possible that James Stockdale saw these Wilkinson tokens, and experiencing problems with wage payment too, looked into a similar solution. However, it is also possible, as Cark Cotton Works were supplied with one of the early models of a Boulton & Watt fire engine in late 1786 and early 1787, that Boulton, being aware of problems with obtaining coinage to pay wages, decided to produce some countermarked coins for his friend as an experiment and advertisement.
Cark Cotton Mill was eventually sold on the 9 May 1814. After remaining empty for many years, the building was used for corn milling by the Hall family, until fire destroyed it on 9 May 1935information from Eric C. Hodge, "Cark Cotton Works", in Spink Numismatic Circular, April 2001, Volume CIX, No. 2.
Cromford, Derbyshire
KM-643; Manville 104 4/9 on 8r 1778 Mo FF (Noonans auction of Eric Hodge Collection, 29 September 2026, lot 6093)
KM-643; Manville 102 5/ (over 4/9) on 8r 1798 Mo FM (Noonans auction of Eric Hodge Collection, 29 September 2026, lot 6091)
Richard Arkwright was one of the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution, making huge improvements in methods of spinning cotton. He opened a horse-powered spinning mill in Nottingham in 1775 and a few years later a larger water-powered mill at Cromford, utilising the waters of the river Derwent. His son, also Richard, took over the running of Cromford and other mills in 1792 and his concern for the health and welfare of his workers resulted in numerous innovations, including the provision of circulating coinage.
Donald & Co., Birmingham, Warwickshire
KM-C645; Manville 100 5/ on 8r 1804 Mo TH (Noonans auction of Eric Hodge Collection, 29 September 2026, lot 6088)
These coins were probably issued by one William Donald, a hosier and clothing and hat manufacturer, listed in the Birmingham trade directories at various addresses between c. 1793 and 1815.
Revolution Mill, East Retford, Nottinghamshire
KM ; Manville 105 crowned ampersand on 8r 1777 Mo FM (Noonans auction of Eric Hodge Collection, 29 September 2026, lot 6098)
Revolution Mill was built by Major John Cartwright, the radical reformer and brother of Rev E Cartwright, the inventor. The mill was on the north side of Spital Hill, Retford, and was completed in 1788 at a cost of £25,000. Its business was "breaking, combing, preparing, spinning, seizing, dressing and winding wool", and it was powered by a Boulton and Watt steam engine of 30 hp, one of the first and largest in the East Midlands. The mill was soon employing 600 people, but it failed and was sold in 1798. The mill was in disuse by the turn of the 19th century and after the building was sold in 1805, Cartwright moved to London.
A drawing dated February 1787 in the Boulton and Watt collection suggests that the mill was 123ft long by 29ft wide and of four storeys.
The lack of an issuer’s name and a denomination place this countermark early in the countermarking period, before marks began to show more details. In fact the mark might never have been connected with the Revolution Mill had it not been for a notation by Sarah Sophia Banks in her acquisitions notebook... that she had received one in 1794Manville. op. cit., p.210.