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Bridgewater Halfpenny​

The coin above is an example of a Conder token.

Conder coins (also known as provincial tokens) were produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were privately minted by business owners, partly due to the lack of small denomination coinage in circulation. The government made little effort to stop the practice and thousands of designs were produced.

Conder tokens are named after James Conder who was an early collector and cataloguer of the tokens.

The 10g copper coin pictured shows a man carrying a load on his back, with the lettering “Manchester

Halfpenny 1793”. The reverse bears the words “Success to Navigation” and a coat of arms. The coat

of arms clearly shows the Bridgewater coat of arms with the lion rampant, crested by a crown. The

‘navigation’ refers to the Bridgewater Canal. There is also an inscription around the edge with different

types produced. This presumably prevented ‘clipping’ - the taking of a small amount of metal off the edge of hand-struck coins to be melted and sold or used to make new coins.

Does anyone know anything further about these coins? Who produced them and where were they used?

In later years the private production of such coins was clamped down upon as it could be used by unscrupulous employers to force workers to use their shops (this is known as the ‘truck system’).

Private token coinage was banned in 1817 and the truck system came to an end (supposedly) with the

Truck Act of 1831.

Thank you to Mark Charnley for supplying information for this article. Other sources include Wikipedia.

If you are interested in local history you will be very welcome at Eccles & District History Society.

Meetings run from September to May. For details of their programme, go to

https://edhs.chessck.co.uk​