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A very intereresting little street which is part of the Tower of London complex. Its name is Mint street and as its name suggests its where the mint used to be. Currency seems to be constantly changing these days – two-pound coins, ever smaller notes. And if the politicians have their way we will soon all be spending euros, and pounds and pence will be a fond memory.
Of course, for many of us it doesn’t seem too long since shillings, ten-bob notes and half-crowns disappeared. And, as sterling looks set to disappear for good, we can reflect that it was only 30 years ago that all of Britain’s spending cash was minted in the borough.
The only legacy of Tower Hamlets’ job supplying the cash that oiled the wheels of the British economy is in the name – Royal Mint Street.
Previously the road, just below Tower Gateway DLR station, was known as Rosemary Lane. But by 1810, space was running short at the Tower of London, the Mint’s previous home. A new building was raised on ‘Little Tower Hill’, the road became Royal Mint Street, and manufacture of the coinage began.
Coins had been minted in the City since 825 and a dedicated building was constructed between the inner and outer walls of the Tower of London in 1300.
Up until then it had been difficult to control the coinage supply. Britain in Anglo-Saxon times was a collection of kingdoms, rather than a unified realm, with all the warlords issuing their own currency. There was huge confusion, with different denominations, and differing values of precious metals within each coin.
The new mint aimed to unify production. And there was summary justice for anyone who fancied knocking out their own coins – amputation of the right hand and castration.
Unsurprisingly, offences were rare and soon all money was struck in the new Royal Mint, under the supervision of the new Master Moneyer, William de Turnemire.
By the time Isaac Newton held the post, from 1699 to 1727, the job carried the title of Master of the Mint.
The mint was now a much more sophisticated operation, with artist-engravers working on sophisticated likenesses of the sovereign of the day, a far cry from the crude drawings on the medieval coins.
And there was a proliferation of new coins too – pounds, shillings, sovereigns, crowns and guineas. In previous times there had just been the humble penny, cast from precious metal of course, and then cut up into pieces to ease smaller transactions.
The eventual moving of the mint from the Tower was not just driven by lack of space. Even at this well-guarded fortress, the home of the Crown Jewels, security was a concern.
In 1798 a thief by the name of Turnbull succeeded in robbing the mint. At gunpoint, he relieved the shocked staff of 2,084 guineas (around one million pounds at current values). The purpose-built edifice in Wapping was far more secure.
But evidence seemed to have been unearthed of another plot, back in 1971. Excavations uncovered a tunnel leading from St Katharine Dock to the very walls of the Rosemary Street mint. At first the authorities thought they had unearthed an aborted robbery – until plans revealed it to be part of a feasibility study for a new pedestrian subway!
When the mint was born, the entire exchequer of Britain was worth around £20,000. By the late 1960s there was billions of pounds-worth of currency in circulation and, with decimalisation fast approaching, it was all going to need replacing.
Sadly, the Government decided the Wapping site was just not big enough, and to modernise and extend it would have been a costly operation.
So in 1968, the operation moved to Wales and, in 1975, the last coin was struck in Tower Hamlets.
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