HODS is usually one of the highlights of our year with lots of visits and talks. Obviously this year things have been curtailed considerably and this was the only event we booked for.
The talk was by Dr Adrian Marsden and was about 17th century trading tokens which may sound a touch dull but wasn't.
Dr Marsden is heading research entitled The Norwich Token Project which looks at a series of tokens/coins produced in Norwich in the middle of the 17th century by traders and town and city corporations to make up for a chronic shortage of small change. In Norfolk there were over 300 different issues and the fascinating things is that all the tokens were unique to individual merchants. One side usually featured the merchant's name and indication of his business and the other side often included the first letter of the merchant's surname on top of the first letter of his first name and the first letter of the first name of his wife.
Very few tokens featured the name of women. Those that did were usually for wives who had carried on their husband's trade after his death. Numerous new tokens are uncovered every year, proving that they were plentiful.
The talk gave a fascinating insight into the merchants and also the history of the Mancroft area of Norwich. It is hoped that a full catalogue will be produced by the Norfolk Token Project sometime next year. As well as looking at the tokens the project is researching the merchants who had them issued and learning about their history.
More details of the tokens, the merchants and the Norfolk Token Project are available at:
https://norfolktokenproject.wordpress.com/
I took a few very quick photos of St Peter Mancroft Church which are at the top of the page and made a mental note to return and take many more once the virus pandemic is over - admitting that may be some time.
Finally today a couple of pictures below of some rather unwanted guests to our garden. Apparently these are Ink cap mushrooms (thanks to Facebook friends who identified them). Apparently they are edible but do not go well with alcohol, so I think I will give it a miss (the mushrooms and not the alcohol).