Owner Comments:
Middlesex Skidmore's Clerkenwell DH #155
Obverse: A many gabled building with two porchway entrances and two lampposts surmounted by a crown THE HOUSE OF LORDS Ex: JACOBS in small letters
Reverse: The fictitious Arms of the Skidmore family surmounted by LONDON, P. SKIDMORE MEDAL MAKER COPPICE ROW CLERKENWELL
Edge: I PROMISE TO PAY ON DEMAND THE BEARER ONE PENNY X
Diesinker: Benjamin Jacobs
Manufacturer: Paul Skidmore
Rarity: Scarce
The old House of Lords was part of the ancient palace at Westminster. The interior was decorated with tapestries representing the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. They were the gift of the States of Holland to Queen Elizabeth. Beneath the House of Lords was a cellar in which the celebrated Gunpower Plot of Guy Fawkes was discovered and foiled.
The token shows the outside of the House of Lords prior to the alteration made shortly before it was destroyed by fire in 1834.
The family business of the token manufacturer Peter Skidmore was an iron foundry at 15 Coppice Row in Clerkenwell with a shop at No. 123 High Holborn. Skidmore realized that there was a market for tokens as the genuine tradesmen's pieces of the time were very keenly collected as they were issued.
Paul Skidmore was the son of Peter. This is from Skidmore's series of 20 ‘Clerkenwell Pennies' that featured well known Provincial buildings, - mainly Guild-halls, Hospitals and Palaces. They were issued them in quite small numbers - plus the dies that Jacobs engraved were quite brittle and many broke before the required number was struck. The coins were primarily sold to collectors but in these times of desperate need for copper change they often got into circulation alongside the regal copper and other genuine tradesmen's tokens.
Atkins: Middlesex 84
Baldwin’s Sale #92, 30 September 2014