History of the halfpenny
aspect of history
The British halfpenny was worth 1/480th of a pound sterling. At first in its 700-year history it was made from silver, but as the value of silver increased the coin was made from base metals. It was finally abandoned in 1969 as part of the process of decimalising the British currency. "Halfpenny", colloquially written ha'penny, was pronounced HAY-pə-nee; "1 ½d" was spoken as a penny ha'penny or three ha'pence .
It was long considered that the first halfpenny coins were produced in the reign of King Edward I (1272–1307), with earlier requirements for small change being provided by "cut coinage"; that is, pennies cut into halves or quarters, usually along the cross which formed a prominent part of the reverse of the coin. However, in recent years metal detectorists have discovered a few halfpennies of Kings Henry I (1100–1135) and Henry III (1216–1272) – these are extremely rare and very little is known about them; they have all been found in the London area, where they circulated alongside the more common cut coinage, and while it is possible that these coins were patterns or trials, it is clear that they did see circulation. It is possible that there are other coins or issues still to be discovered.
Early halfpennies
A few King Henry I silver halfpennies have been discovered recently. The issue is possibly a pattern or trial, but it is obvious that several specimens entered circulation. The obverse features an uncrowned front-facing bust of the king, with the inscription HENRIC REX – King Henry – while the reverse features a cross with the identification of the moneyer GODWIN A ON WI – Godwin of Winchester.
“History of the halfpenny” enters the record as aspect of history. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what History, halfpenny and aspect can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “History of the halfpenny” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.