What is british money called

So with decimalisation came a system of pounds and pence doing away with shillings altogether. Under this system pence is equal to one pound making working with the UK currency far easier. Currently the currency in use is as follows: coins: 1 penny, 2 pence, 5 pence, 10 pence, 20 pence, 50 pence, one pound, 2 pounds.

The 1 penny and 2 pence piece are bronze, the 5, 10, 20 and 50 pence pieces are silver and the 1 and 2 pound coins are gold. All coins carry the Queens head on the front. Front view. Like the UK coins the notes all carry the Queens head. They also carry a watermark that is visible to the eye only when held up to the light.

The watermark is the Queens head and shows in the egg shaped white space on all the above notes. There is also a silver strip that shows when held up to the light along the width of the notes. Its made from a material called polymer which is a flexible thin plastic. The abbreviation comes from librae , solidi , denarii libra was the basic Roman unit of weight; the solidus and denarius were Roman coins.

The coins in circulation: 1 penny, 2 pence, 5 pence, 10 pence, 20 pence, 50 pence, 1 pound, 2 pounds. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man have some different coins and notes from the mainland but the monetary system is the same. If an amount of money consists only of pence, we put the letter ' p ' after the figures. For example: 20p is often pronounced " twenty pee " rather than " twenty pence ". The singular of pence is " penny ". If an amount of money consists of both pounds and pence, we write the pound symbol and separate the pounds and the pence with a full stop.

We do not write ' p ' after the pence. When saying aloud an amount of money that consists of pounds and pence, we do not usually say the word ' pence '. Note also that we say 2 pound s , 5 pound s , 10 pound s , etc.

Of course, if you watch period dramas or read historical fiction, you're going to hear about entirely different types of money. Now, keep in mind that the UK has more than years of monetary history, to the point that it would take a book or two to properly cover it all. Instead, we'll focus on things you're likely to encounter in TV, movies, and literature.

Logically, it follows that you'd have pence to a pound. Historically, pounds came in either paper bills called notes or a quid, or gold coins called sovereigns. Granted, this was a pretty substantial sum of money, so it's not something an average person would be carrying around until the fairly recent past.

It would be pretty simple if it was just pounds, shillings, and pence, but that would be too easy. And what about guineas? You've probably heard someone talk about guineas at some point, and that's something a little different.

A guinea was a gold coin worth 1 pound, 1 shilling. That extra shilling made it somehow more gentlemanly. One great example of guinea usage would be the auction scene in Series 1, Episode 4 of Cranford.

They remained in circulation with relatively few changes until Unlike modern fivers, they were printed on white paper with blank ink, roughly half the size of a modern A4 page.

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