Cornish currency

Cornish currency
£5 and £1 issued by the Cornish stannary parliament 1974
Denominations
Subunit
1/100	dynar, pound sterling
Symbol	d, £, /~
Banknotes	500d, £1, 5/~, 10/~, 50p
Demographics
User(s)	Cornwall see also Constitutional Status of Cornwall

Currency, in the form of coins, has been issued in Cornwall periodically since at least the 10th century AD, while banknotes were issued into the 19th century.

The earliest known Cornish mint was at Launceston (originally at St Stephen by Launceston), which operated on a minimal scale at the time of Ethelred II, in 976 AD (that is, before Cornwall received full diocesan jurisdiction in the year 994 AD). Only one specimen, a heavy (1.61 g.) coin, is known to exist. After the Norman Conquest, Robert, Count of Mortain (William the Conqueror's half-brother) was given much of Cornwall, including Dunheved and rebuilt the castle there. He expropriated the market and mint from the canons of St Stephen and the townspeople followed these to Dunheved. The mint was reopened halfway through the Conqueror's reign.

Another early reference to the Cornish currency, the "dynar," is found in a thirteenth-century Cornish play containing the line "dhodh a dela pymp cans dyner", which translates as "he was owed five hundred dyner." The only English coin at the time was the silver penny: presumably the dynar was equivalent to this.

A Royalist mint was established in Truro in 1642-43 during the English Civil War by Sir Richard Vyvyan; in September 1643 it was moved to Exeter.

Several Cornish towns in the mining districts set up their own banks and even issued their own banknotes. One example is 'The Mounts Bay Commercial Bank' which was set up 1807 by the Bolitho family of Penzance. The Consolidated Bank of Cornwall was taken over by Barclays Bank in 1905. In 2004 a rare banknote from the Falmouth bank sold for £540. Several other examples of Cornish banknotes are held at the County Museum in Truro.

In more recent times Cornish currency was issued by the Cornish Stannary Parliament in 1974 under the name of the 'Cornish National Fund'. The Cornish National Fund was established with the objective of raising funds to assist with a "campaign for the restitution of Cornwall’s legal right to partially govern itself and to raise appreciation within Cornwall of the aims of the Stannary Parliament."