Great Britain - 1794

½ Penny Token

(D & H 31 - Suffolk, Haverhill)
Obverse - Great Britain - 1794 Reverse - Great Britain - 1794
Obverse - A weaver at work in a loom.
Legend: HAVERHILL MANUFACTORY
Reverse - A cypher, JF in script capitals within a dotted oval surmounted by a Crest: (A wolf's head erased, holding in its mouth a branch of laurel vert, fructed gules). The work is on too small a scale to show these tinctures.
Legend: PRO BONO PUBLICO 1794
Edge: - PAYABLE AT IOHN FINCHAMS SUFFOLK with the rest engrailed.
Diesinker, Wyon; manufacturer, Kempson. Ten cwts struck. Common.
 
Comments. The cypher and crest are those of John Fincham, who appears to have owned a cloth factory in Haverhill, a town famous in the eighteenth century for its manufacture of checks, cottons, fustians, and coarse linens or "ducks". Haverhill is partly in the hundred of Risbridge in Suffolk, and partly in that of Hinckford in Essex, the boundary line crossing the south end of the main street.
Commercial Coins 1787-1804., pp. 173-174
D & H 31 - Suffolk, Haverhill
O: A man weaving in a loom. HAVERHILL MANUFACTORY.
R: A cypher IF within an oval, crest a wolf's head.
A. 29
E: PAYABLE AT IOHN FINCHAMS SUFFOLK.
Also struck in silver.