FINDON'S MEDIEVAL SILVER PENNIES

Copyright Valerie Martin 2010

What have the above two gentlemen in common with Findon?  

Answer: buried wealth in village soil discovered in 2002 at the medieval Findon settlement north of the Manor of Findon and St. John the Baptist Church.

I am going to take you back to the Middle Ages and the historic symbols of coinage in Findon.   It is always best to start at the beginning.    It was in March 2010 when I received an email from Mick Farrow in Worthing explaining his exciting discovery eight years before......

Needless to say, I did reply to Mick and he duly sent me images of his finds...

Here's Mick Farrow doing his metal detecting....

In Medieval times, coins were minted from precious metal (silver was the most favoured) and their weight and purity determined the value.  Mick's coins show little sign of wear to me, they appear in unbelievably good condition considering they have been buried in the Findon sod for hundreds of years.  

I can glean only scant information on our coins so there are a few mysteries yet to be unravelled.  

Their size in both cases is approximately ¾ inch in diameter and they were discovered not very far from the site of the original village of and confirm (as I have always maintained).... that the medieval settlement was near the Manor of Findon and St. John the Baptist Church.   This indicates the possibility that the owners of the silver pennies were likely to be the inhabitants of that village or visitors thereto.

Were the silver pennies dropped accidentally?    Were they part of a hidden hoard?    These are questions that will now not be answered with any certainty and just left to conjecture.    My imagination runs wild with the possibilities.

Henry II introduced a new silver penny in 1180. This coin took its name from the design on the reverse, and was known as a Short Cross penny.   Our Henry II penny was minted in Lincoln, over 200 miles away and so was well-travelled by the time it reached the South Downs.  (The proof of the minting location can be read on the reverse of the coins .... if you can interpret the abbreviations).   

When Mick's metal detector located our silver penny it had ended its purchasing power in a field to the west of Tolmare Farm.  What could our penny have bought in the village during Henry II's reign?   It had at the time perhaps the equivalent purchasing power of around £4.50 today.   There is no documented evidence of Findon commodity prices so exact figures are hard to come by.   

I wonder what the rate of pay in the village could possibly have been..... just under one silver penny per day for working at Findon Manor perhaps?

Prices of farming stock obviously fluctuated across the countryside and as Findon has always been sheep country, some good animals would have cost maybe around twelve pennies each. 

If you were a Findonian and had a couple of chickens for sale..... how much could you expect to get for them?   The answer is one penny for the two hens.   The same price as 2 dozen eggs if you were selling them.

Mick tells me that Henry III issued the Longcross Penny from the year 1247 onwards, in an attempt to prevent the population clipping little segments of silver from coins (but the practice still went on).    As you can see, neither of the silver pennies discovered in Findon appear to have been clipped.

Mick's Henry III coin was actually minted over 300 miles away in Durham and it was unearthed to the east of St. John the Baptist Church... in the field immediately on the left turning in to Church Lane from the A24.

He tells me that at this time a working horse could be purchased for four shillings.  Five pennies was the asking price for a goose.   Cheap wine (purchased by the gallon in those days) was less than three pennies......but the best wine fetched more like eight pennies.   

Findon may not have been in such a backwater in those days as you might imagine.   Fair gatherings go back to when Henry III granted a charter for the village to hold a fair..... a good place to be spending lots of the peasants' pennies.    Fairs were the gathering places in medieval Findon and usually lasted for three days.

In medieval Findon, a long line of the De Braose family had held the Manor for many years.   William de Clifford married into the family and in 1261 asked the king for a charter to be allowed to conduct a weekly market, fair and free warren for the village.  And so it came about that in the 45th year of the reign of Henry III, the charter was granted to the Lord of the Manor of Findon for a weekly market to be conducted on Tuesdays.     Thus making even more opportunities for trading with those silver pennies.   

It is believed that the original fairs in Findon were of a general nature sometimes known as "pedlary".   The exact location where these were held is unknown, but as I have already stated we do know that the medieval village was sited just north of the church.   The fairs could have been in any of the fields where every week money and goods were exchanged.

In 1275, the burgesses of neighbouring Steyning jumped up and down in anguish complaining that our market was prejudicial to the boroughs of their Bramber rape.  It appears that their customers and hawkers were trekking over the downland to attend the Findon market.    I expect you can see what I am getting at....many silver pennies passed hands under the Findon skies in those medieval days and we now know some were dropped and trampled underfoot.

By the time Henry III died, a large loaf was most probably costing the villagers a half penny.   Horse prices had doubled during his 56 year reign .....and it took 30 sheep to produce 20s worth of wool per year. 

It is interesting to note that a labourer's wage has risen slightly by this time to one and a half pennies for a day's work.  A more wealthy peasant would expect to pay six pennies for a pair of shoes..... and a landless serf would be spending under six pennies for a tunic..... a cheaper style could be had for as little as one penny. 

Henry II's name has up until now been mostly remembered for the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas à Becket in 1170 but ―

.....from now on I expect Henry II and Henry III will go down in village history for their Medieval silver pennyworths unearthed in the Findon sod.   

What could I do with those silver pennies today .... I suppose I could make them into pendants and wear them!  

Continue if you would like to read The Treasures of Downland

 Medieval Findon Village near the Church

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THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE —  is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life around Findon.