November 26th 2019.
Next club meeting Monday 2nd December 2019.
The activities will be as follows:
1.
The main feature will be a mini coin fair for members to bring along items for sale.
2.
A coin quiz
3.
Members to bring along one or two items
that for some reason are considered special (e.g. recent acquisition, a long
sought after piece, an unusual find, an oddity etc.). A brief written
explanation as to why the piece is special to you.
4.
Christmas buffet!
Meetings are held
at the Abbey Baptist Church, Abbey Square, commencing at 7.00 p.m.
Notices
·
Please continue thinking about Short Talks for
January, and Auction lots for March!
Skittles Evening
A jolly evening was had at the Jack of Newbury pub in Binfield
where members and partners met to do battle in the skittle alley. A splendid Chicken
and chips supper accompanied a very good selection of beers, wines and other beverages.
To start with (as usual) the lads were beaten by the girls by 123 skittles to
112. Top scorer was Sue. Barry restored some of the lad’s pride by winning the
second game (where at least one skittle needs to be knocked down in each throw).
Finally, in the third game (where only one skittle is to be knocked down
in each throw) Mick was the last man standing. The next skittles evening will
be in May next year, further details to follow.
November Meeting
If you use the search engine on the Club’s website you
will find that our guest speaker, Philip Mernick,
previously spoke to the Club in 2006 about Early Jetons.
At our November meeting he chose Billies and Charlies, another topic
close to his heart.
For about 15 years, between
1857 and 1871, controversy raged in England about the status of ‘discoveries’
by small-time dealers William Smith and Charles Eaton (Billy and Charley) from
Shadwell, in London’s dockland. During the excavations for the Eastern Dock and
Shadwell basin (1828-32) a number of Roman artefacts
had been uncovered, attracting the interest of collectors and museums. New
discoveries followed in 1857, but these were different; they were non-classical
and incorporated aspects of mediaeval style.
The written tale starts with
George Eastwood, a dealer, writing to Thomas Bateman, an antiquary (and barrow
digger), that he had acquired a collection of about 600 lead pieces (pilgrim
badges, statues, etc.) dating from Richard II. Bateman wrote to leading antiquarian,
[Henry] Syer Cuming in 1858
saying that in his view they were fakes. For example, the pilgrim badges were
about four times the size normally found by London Bridge, and there were many
other features which were wrong, such as coins were dated ‘1030’ in Arabic
numerals, a style that did not come into use until hundreds of years later.
In the meantime, there had been a scramble to acquire
these items, notwithstanding there was an ongoing public debate in (for
example) The Atheneum which described them as
‘forgeries’. A court case followed in August 1858,
when the Editor was successfully sued by George Eastwood. But the word was out.
The Times, more carefully describes the issue of 2,000
items of ‘recent fabrication’. Eastwood, meanwhile, had decided to cut out the
middlemen and go direct to the dockers.
Poor communications allowed
the sales of ‘new’ discoveries to continue, but in 1861 Charles Roach Smith,
who initially believed them to be genuine, perhaps from the Reign of Mary, and
the Society of Antiquaries of London, settled the matter with the discovery of
some of Billy and Charley’s clay moulds. But, dealing continued in the
provinces, and Court cases came down to whether the buyer actually
believed they were real, as no claims had been made by the seller. Syer Cuming established a small
museum in Southwark to exhibit the product of years of collecting, including
his Billies and Charlies.
Philip has set up a website (http://www.mernick.org.uk/B&C/
) dedicated to his studies which includes:
Pilgrims badges |
157 |
Statues |
74 |
Ampulla |
62 |
Reliquaries |
39 |
Coins |
13 |
Miscellaneous |
26 |
But the search goes on!
Phillip brought a number of the Shadwell Shams
with him to illustrate the talk.
Future Events.
Past Events
10 years ago Tim Everson gave a talk on Communion Tokens
20 Years ago –
Peter Preston-Morley presented a talk on the
East India Company Portcullis coinage of 1600/1
40 Years ago – The Club
Auction took place earning the club a commission of £18.79
Club Secretary.