Owner Comments:
Middlesex Skidmore's Churches and Gates DH #667
Obverse: The ruins of the Priory of St. Saviour - BERMONDSEY PRIORY.
Reverse: The Skidmore cypher - PSCO in script, 1797 below DEDICATED . TO . COLLECTORS . OF . MEDALS. & COINS . surrounding
Edge: Plain
Diesinker: Benjamin Jacobs
Manufacturer: Paul Skidmore
Rarity: Common
The priory of Cluniac monks was founded in 1082 by Aylwin Childe, a wealthy London citizen. Two queens died within the priory's walls, Catherine of Valois, widow of Henry V on January 3rd, 1437 and Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV on June 8th 1498. The priory was turned over to Henry VIII as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries and torn down by Sir Thomas Pope, founder of Trinity College, Oxford.
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. As well as making genuine tradesmens' tokens to order, he also made pennies and halfpennies for sale to collectors of the time - especially series of Buildings Tokens for London.
One of a set of 120 pieces - each portraying a well-known church in or around London.
Stacks Bowers Johnson-Blue Sale, 8 August 2010