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You are here: Home / History / How Often Have You Used a £50 Note?

How Often Have You Used a £50 Note?

June 17, 2014 By chippy minton 6 Comments

How often have you used a £50 note?

My guess is “not very often”. In fact, I’ve got one at home at the moment, and am not too sure what to do with it. The only time I’ve used them was an occasion when I needed to pay a cash deposit, and £50 notes was the easiest way to carry it.

My mother visited the UK recently and she brought currency in the form of £50 notes for similar reasons. More often than not, when she used one in a shop, the assistant would have to check with a supervisor that it was valid – the design changed in April 2014, and they don’t see them often enough to recognise whether or not it is the new issue.

£50 note.
£50 note.

To me, £50 seems a lot of money to carry in a single bank note – far more than two £20 and one £10 note. Yet its value today is a fraction of what it was when it was introduced in 1981. According to the Bank of England inflation calculator, £50 in 1981 was worth £15.50 in 2012 (the latest year the calculator runs to).

I first saw a £50 note in 1988 when I was working as a shop assistant (£50 in 1988 was worth £22.01 in 2012). A customer wanted to pay for a less-than-£5 purchase with one. I had to refuse as there wasn’t enough cash in the till to provide change. In 2014 one shop refused my mother’s £50 for the same reason (even though her purchases came to £20 rather than £5).

Old money; new pence

Older readers will remember “old money”. Slightly younger readers will have a vague recollection that there was something before “new pence”. Even younger readers probably don’t realise that there was once 240 pence in a pound, and have never seen the need to qualify “pence” with “new”, or “currency” with “decimal”.

Some pre-decimal coins: a twelve-sided threepenny (thrupenny) bit, introduced in the early 1940s; two even older threepenny “joeys”; a sixpence (“tanner”); and the well-known Britannia penny.
Some pre-decimal coins: a twelve-sided threepenny (thrupenny) bit, introduced in the early 1940s; two even older threepenny “joeys”; a sixpence (“tanner”); and the well-known Britannia penny.

I was born in the pre-decimal era, but don’t remember it. I was the age where I understand that you exchanged coins for goods but was too young to understand the value of either. Because decimalisation was imminent, my parents didn’t teach me how to recognise and count the old coins.

At infant school we had cards on which we placed plastic coins, as part of our education about money. If we peeled off the “1p” stickers, we could see “1d” underneath. I now suspect that these cards originally held twelve pennies to make one shilling, and that the bottom two positions had been removed to make them hold ten pence.

The introduction of decimal currency

The introduction of decimal currency to the UK on 15 February 1971 was, by all accounts, pretty much a non-event. Not a lot changed. The fifty-pence coin had been around for a few years (replacing the ten-shilling note). The new five and ten pence coins were the same size and value as the old one and two shillings (and remained valid until the five and ten pence coins were redesigned in the early 1990s – and is there a more annoyingly-sized coin than the current five pence?). The sixpence coin – now worth two-and-a-half pence (pronounced “tuppence ha’p’ny”) – remained in circulation until 1980 (and no one found it strange that a coin known as a “sixpence” was worth 2 ½ pence).

Examples of the original decimal coins.
Examples of the original decimal coins.

When I was seven or eight my mum sent me to the village shop for some groceries. When I opened the purse she had given me the money in I was horrified to see that she had given me an old coin – it had the king’s head on it. “How am I going to pay?” I wondered, and carefully passed the coin over head-side down, hoping that they wouldn’t notice. That’s when I learned that the old coins were still valid currency – even coins that were so old that they had shown the king’s head.

Ten new pence and the same-sized two shilling (“florin”) coins.
Ten new pence and the same-sized two shilling (“florin”) coins.
Five new pence and the same sized shilling (“bob”) coins.
Five new pence and the same sized shilling (“bob”) coins.

The latest coins feature the royal coat of arms – in full on the pound coin, and split as a jigsaw pattern across the others.

Latest coins feature the royal coat of arms.
Latest coins feature the royal coat of arms.
New coins features the coat of arms of the English crown.
New coins features the coat of arms of the English crown.

It is the coat of arms of the English crown. I wonder whether Scotland has coins showing the Scottish royal coat of arms. Or maybe that is something that is waiting for the result of September’s referendum.

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About chippy minton

I've lived in Chandler's Ford and Eastleigh for most of my working life, with interspersed with a few years in north-west Hampshire (though remaining a regular visitor to the area).

I work in IT, and my hobbies include bell ringing, walking and cycling. I am also a self-confessed “born-again runner” having discovered parkrun in 2015.

I enjoy live theatre and music, and try to watch many of the shows that are performed in the Eastleigh area.

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Comments

  1. Janet Williams says

    June 17, 2014 at 10:14 pm

    Thank you for your excellent research. The facts are so mind-boggling! When I learned English in the Far East in the 80s, some old textbooks still used shillings and we still learned sentence structures using the word ‘shillings’ in role-playing shopping without realising the outside world had moved on.

    Now I’ve also learnt about the coat of arms of the English crown on the new coins – the last image is so beautifully laid out and the full picture is astonishing. Thank you for your not-so-useless information on the history of the British currency – always learning something new from chippy.

    Reply
  2. Janet Williams says

    June 17, 2014 at 10:20 pm

    Why did the shop assistants worry about the £50 note? I thought they normally use a counterfeit note detector pen? How does the detector pen work?

    Reply
    • Chippy says

      June 17, 2014 at 11:12 pm

      It wasn’t so much to check whether it was forged (my mum has an honest face). It was to confirm that it was the current version of the bank note.

      Reply
  3. Ruby says

    June 17, 2014 at 11:10 pm

    The ‘old money’ denominations originated in the roman empire, were librae, solidi and denarii – which in English became pounds, shillings and pence, though the abbreviation LSD remained. The £ pound sign comes from a stylised L. The name of the Turkish and (pre-euro) Italien Lira also comes from the same source.

    Oh, and the # sign is also sometimes known as a ‘pound sign’ – especially in America. But this is pounds weight, not pounds currency.

    Reply

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