Medieval Irish Penny - Edward I(1272-1307) Waterford Mint

[UkrainiiVityaz]

One of the benefits of searching USA auction sites etc is that often they are selling certified coinage without much of a description - earlier in the year I bid on and won an Alexander III(1249-1286) penny with a 28 point in the stars reverse that was not described as such by the firm auctioning it.

The description on this one was very minimalist - just a common Irish penny issued during the reign of Edward I without any mention of where it was minted.  I know medieval British well enough to read the legends - Waterford mint!  Most Irish pennies were minted in Dublin, and Waterford is much less common.  Pennies struck in Ireland were different so that they would stay in Ireland which is why there is a triangle around the portrait of Edward I.

[John Conduitt]

Nice looking coin. It's one of the annoyances with certification that the descriptions are lacking, but it seems it can be used to your advantage.

[UkrainiiVityaz]

1 hour ago, John Conduitt said:

Nice looking coin. It's one of the annoyances with certification that the descriptions are lacking, but it seems it can be used to your advantage.

I guess it could irritate if I was a knowing submitter and the grading company left off important aspects like scarce mints.  My other lucky purchase was from CNG and I have purchased British from them for years - I would have expected they would have caught the mint detail with the Ayr mint.  Good for me though, only about a dozen or so reported examples of the Scots penny and I own a couple of them.

[JeandAcre]

That's a brilliant example, @UkrainiiVityaz. 

...No worries; I get it that you don't need this, but it sent me back to this remarkably solid website on all things Irish, medieval and numismatic: http://www.irishcoinage.com/EDW1.HTM

(The best I have in print is a 2003 edition of Spink, Scotland, Ireland and the Isles.  Which is better than you might expect, for the classes (right, within the Irish series) and date ranges.  --But it still doesn't list this variety --for Waterford-- with two pellets below the collar!  For Dublin, it's easily the first issue of the New Coinage.)

...And then, from this front, it gets better.  I can't even find the pics of my one and only Edward I penny of, as you note, the much commoner mint of Dublin.  (What I did a lot of, during the 2000s and 2010s, was to paste pictures into various documents, etc., and not to keep the original .jpgs (which they always were, back then).  Now I have a dedicated thumb drive for that --thank you, that you could leave an apartment fire with-- but until I wade into a Lot of untitled stuff on the hard drive, from the days when I had only less of a clue than I do now, there's just going to be a lot of collateral damage on this front.)

On a cheerier note, here's Reginald's Tower, in Waterford.  Yep, minus any extant remains of the curtain wall, it's a free-standing keep.  As such, especially for this part of the world, the cylindrical design is unmistakably late-12th-earlier 13th century, coinciding with the initial Norman aristocratic occupation, under Angevin royal rule.  ...The Wiki article is surprisingly good for the genre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald's_Tower

 

 

Edited August 26, 2022 by JeandAcre

[UkrainiiVityaz]

@JeandAcre Allegedly the Reginalds Tower was also where the mint was housed.  Unfortunately whence I am in that part of the world in a few weeks Waterford is not in our plans, mostly Galway Glendalough etc in our short time in the south and a lot more in the North of Ireland.

Regarding images - at one time I scanned images of everything, but moves back and forth, war etc I ended up deleting some of my files by accident and am slowly organising others 

 

[JeandAcre]

@UkrainiiVityaz, sincere condolences on losing your files ...along with some of the circumstances. 

I can readily sympathize with your predicament of not being able to visit Waterford.  On my family's (and my) sole trip to Europe, we --of course-- missed more than we saw. 

(My major coup, at the age of 11, was to successfully insist that, on the way to Calais to catch the Dover ferry (this was 1973), we stopped in Bayeux to see the tapestry.  It became a memory for a lifetime.  Sadly, by the time we left the museum with the tapestry, the cathedral was closed.  But the exterior was memorable enough to eventually elicit the following haiku.  It was written decades later, but was firmly based on my initial impression:

Bayeux Cathedral:
Gothic sits on Romanesque
Like a wedding cake.)

My impression --vague, 'off the top of my head,' but emphatic-- is that mints were often located in castles.  ...Issues of security being an immediate, intuitive criterion.  Yes, there's the Tower in London, but I'm sure there are many other examples in England, which escape me at the moment.  And French feudal deniers of the 12th and 13th centuries frequently include a version of 'CASTRVM' after the name of the mint city on the reverse.

 

Edited August 27, 2022 by JeandAcre

[Edessa]

Ireland. Edward I, AD 1272-1307. AR Penny (19mm, 1.34g, 2h). Second (’ЄDW’) coinage, Type Ib. Waterford mint. Struck AD 1279-1284. Obv: .EDW.R.ANGL.DNS HYB; Crowned facing bust; trefoil of pellets on breast; all within triangle. Rev: CIVI TAS WATE RFOR; Long cross pattée, with trefoil in each angle. Ref: SCBI 22 (Copenhagen), 370; SCBC 6254. Fine and nicely toned but holed.

[JeandAcre]

Well, okay; along the lines of Irish coins of the Angevin period, and castles, here's what I can do.  So why not?

Here's my Dublin penny of John as king.  Circa 1207-1211; easily the commonest Irish issue of the entire reign.  But in his name, as distinctively so as the ones of his elder brother, Richard I, from Poitiers and Bordeaux.  ...It's already embarrassing how often I've posted this coin!

Obv.  John, in the prototypical triangle, crowned, holding a sceptre, whose tip interrupts the last part of the legend.  IO[hA .../] NNE[S...] REX

Rev.  Sun (the swirly thing at the top) above a crescent moon; stars in each corner of the triangle.  ROBE [...] RD ON [...] DIVE (Roberd, the moneyer in Dublin.  Interesting how, even with the distinctive letter forms here, verging toward anticipation of the fully realized Gothic ones in the Long Cross pennies, relatively late in his son's reign, John is also perpetuating English formula in the legends themselves, going back to the late Anglo-Saxons.  Obverse: name and title, in Latin; reverse: mint and moneyer, in late Old /early Middle English.  ...Still funly bilingual, but not likely to impress much of the native population.)

Spink, Scotland and the Isles (2003), 6228.

And here are a reconstruction, a pic, and a plan of my all-time favorite Irish castle.  Trim, in county Meath, not far to the north of Dublin.  It was consistently under aristocratic, rather than royal control and, to my limited knowledge, never had a mint.  But in particular, the design of the keep (c. late 12th c.), is effectively unique.

 

[akeady]

There was a mint at Trim!, presumably in the castle.   I don't have any coins from there, unfortunately. 

It's a fine castle and worth a visit.    Used in the filming of Braveheart.

ATB,

Aidan.

[JeandAcre]

...Thanks for the elucidation about the mint, @akeady, and Congratulations on getting there!

The dynastic history is fun.  It was built and initially held by the de Lacys, one of the leading initial Anglo-Norman families in Ireland.  Then it fell by marriage to a younger brother of the memoirist of St. Louis's first crusade, Jean de Joinville (generally rendered 'de Geneville' for the brother), and finally the de Mortimers, including the Edmund who overthrew Edward II.

...I'm looking a little more closely at the guide book I found on UK ebay, and it notes the mint having begun in 1460.  That, at least, is why it went under my radar.

Edited August 27, 2022 by JeandAcre

[akeady]

During the less strict part of the original Covid lockdown in 2020, I took a week off work and made a few short trips - Trim is about half an hour from where I live, so I made it to there, the Hill Of Tara and Bective Abbey one day.   Walking in Wicklow another day and chores around home the rest of the week, as far as I remember!   A photo' from Trim.

Our friends in the Northern Branch of the Numismatic Society of Ireland made an excursion around the island, visiting all the mediaeval mints a few years back - a trip I should undertake too.   I don't have many old Irish coins, I'd like a Hiberno Norse penny.

ATB,

Aidan.

[JeandAcre]

Fantastic, @akeady!  

Very best of luck getting a Hiberno Norse penny.  When I Finally landed one, holed but satisfyingly early, it wasn't just an event, it was a milestone.

Have you seen this thread?  It Can Be Done!!!  

 

[akeady]

20 minutes ago, JeandAcre said:

Fantastic, @akeady!  

Very best of luck getting a Hiberno Norse penny.  When I Finally landed one, holed but satisfyingly early, it wasn't just an event, it was a milestone.

Have you seen this thread?  It Can Be Done!!!  

 

I hadn't seen that thread, thanks @JeandAcre.

It can certainly be done - there are lots of them in Noonan's sale on 27th September, but TBD whether I will have any money then 😄

ATB,
Aidan.

Edited August 27, 2022 by akeady

[JeandAcre]

Well, best of luck, (ahem) Aidan!  The Noonan's sale was completely off my radar; I'm about to go and find it.  ...But --consider the source-- I can't help thinking that something of this significance is worth going a little ways out on a limb for.  Hope you get one ...and, of course, post it!!!

[Edessa]

As with just about everything else, these were much more reasonably priced back in the day.

Ireland. Hiberno-Norse. Phase III. Circa AD 1035-1055/1060. AR Penny (16mm, 0.90g, 6h). Phase III coinage. Long cross type. Obv: Draped bust left. Rev: Voided long cross, with triple crescent ends; ‘hand’ symbols in second and third quarters. Ref: SCBC 6132. Good Very Fine, iridescently toned. Ex Colosseum Coin Exchange, May 2009.

[UkrainiiVityaz]

Years ago I owned both a Waterford and a Dublin penny, Cork being so far off the radar it was never considered.  But along with a lot of the English hammered I sold them off to fund other projects and there are still a few I miss.

 

And the Noonans sale, well they got me on banknotes so no coins for the now.