| |
| Comments. The token does not bear the issuer's name, but it probably
emanated from the proprietors of an extensive factory at a place called
the Isle, about five miles from Shrewsbury. |
| |
| The arms of Shrewsbury were originally three lions
passant gardant; the leopards' faces are found for the first time on the
seal of the Borough engraved in A.D. 1425. In the eighteenth century the
town was an important centre of the wool trade, being the chief mart for
the coarse Welsh webs made in Montgomeryshire, known as High Country cloth,
and those of Denbighshire known as Low Country cloth; the former being
dressed or sheared by the shearmen of Shrewsbury. The design of the woolpack
is appropriate both to the issuer and the town, where woollen markets and
wool fairs were held. |
| |
| There is a forgery of this token dated 1794, and the
dies have been mixed with several others to produce mules for sale to collectors.
The genuine pieces are D&H 19-22. |
| |
| Westwood fabricated a half-halfpenny of this design. |
| Commercial Coins 1787-1804., pp. 143-144 |
