When Chipping Norton and Evesham had own banknotes (From Tewkesbury Admag)

When Chipping Norton and Evesham had own banknotes

AS a Scotsman living south of the border, I'm used to hearing cracks about the value of Scottish banknotes.

They are, of course, exchangeable at exactly the same rate as their English counterparts.

However, while a number of Scottish clearing banks can and still do produce their own banknotes, we depend entirely on the Bank of England for our currency production.

It was not always so, as this rare Evesham tenner, soon to go under the hammer in a London auction room, shows.

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, small local banks were formed and had the authority to print their own money.

There were a number of reasons for this, not least the proliferation of footpads and highwaymen - today's muggers. Transporting large sums of cash was a hazardous business.

In addition, many smaller more isolated towns, unused to long-distance travel, still saw the need to encourage local commerce and the banknote was perceived as a suitable means of currency.

In Evesham, the local banking economy seems to be have launched by two local giants of commerce, Messrs Perrott and Lavender sometime before 1793.

The partnership later became Oldaker, Day, Lavender & Murrell, but like so many of the smaller banks, as roads and railways opened up the country, they went bust - in this case in 1826.

However, five years later, the Gloucestershire Banking Company was founded, with branches in Evesham, Cirencester, Coleford, Hereford, Stow, Stroud and Monmouth.

It became a limited company 42 years later and then in 1886 - just four years after they produced the £10 note now up for sale - the bank was taken over by Capital & Counties Bank Ltd, which itself was taken over by Lloyds Bank in 1918 at the end of the First World War.

Evesham was not alone in having its own banknotes. Two years ago, two rare 19th century Chipping Norton banknotes went to auction, raising 100 times their original face value.

The notes, with a face value of £5 and £10, were printed in May 1816, eventually sold for £420 and £800. With the buyer's premium of 17 per cent, the total paid for the two was £1,427.

At the time, Barnaby Faull, a banknote expert with specialist auction house Spink said they were "among the rarer notes" of those produced during the period, when towns and cities throughout England printed their own notes.

The notes were produced, he said, because it was difficult to get hold of Bank of England notes and people did not want to walk about with that amount of money in coins.

Spink describe the Evesham note in their sale as "rare and attractive" and despite its age in "very good" condition.

Notes, particularly high denomination notes such as this one. From provincial banks in the late 1800s and early 1900s are especially rare, because most of these privately-owned banks had either folded or been taken over by that time.

Mr Faull said: "All towns and cities in England used to issue their own banknotes.

"Merchants would get together in the towns and start up their own banks, but their notes - which were like IOUs - could only be used locally.

"When many of these banks went bust, their notes became completely worthless."

In recent years, though, notes like the Evesham tenner have quietly increased in value.

The current world record for an English provincial banknote is £3,335, the sum paid at Spink on April 27, 2004 for an 1829 Wirksworth & Ashbourn £5 from Derbyshire. Before the auction it had been expected to fetch between £300 and £500.

Such is the renewed interest in these old notes, Spink are offering a free valuation for Journal readers in the Vale and Cotswolds with similar notes.

Mr Faull said: "Sometimes these notes are found in unlikely places and some have even been found in old family Bibles, perhaps put there for safekeeping and then forgotten. So that is always a good place to begin the search."