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U.K.
CURRENCY
PRIOR TO DECIMALISATION
In one of the pages on Cockney
rhyming slang there is mention of various pre-decimal coins e.g. “thrupney
bit” and “two bob bit”. Anyone born after 1970 is
unlikely to know anything about this type of currency so this, together with
an email from Diana Tranter (a site visitor)
meant “I felt a new page coming on!”. Diana says – “A ‘thrupney bit‘ was a threepenny ‘bit’ (pronounced ‘thra’pny’) which was worth 3 (old) pennies when there was 12 pennies in one shilling (1/-d). The 3d bit was a coin shaped like a 20p piece but the 3d bit was a yellow bronze colour and much thicker in diameter and heavier than the 20p of today. Before the yellow bronze 3d bit, there was a silver 3d bit which was much smaller than our 1p of today and also much lighter in weight. A ‘tupney’ bit….there never was a two penny coin in £.s.d.. There was a copper Farthing (1/4d) about the size of our 1p of today. The Farthing was worth a quarter of one (old) penny – 1d), there was a copper half penny coin (commonly called ha’pny – 1/2d) about the size of our 5p coin of today – and there was a one penny coin which was a large copper coin about the size of our £2 coin of today, but the 1d copper coin was not as thick in diameter. There was
no two penny coin….” Having read that I thought it
may be of interest to see the old coins she mentions so have scanned those
in my possession which you can see below; as you can see I wasn’t well
off enough at the time to keep any of the notes – Before decimalisation (February
15th 1971) the currency in the UK was as follows:- 12 pennies (d) = 1 shilling 20 shillings = 1 pound After decimalisation this was
changed to 100 pence = 1 pound 5 new pence = 1 shilling 10 new pence = 2 shillings N.B. ‘d’ = an old penny
and ‘p’ = a new penny Please note these images are larger
than the actual coins – see note below. | 
