![]() A single pound coin was made of gold and known as a sovereign. It wouldn’t fit inside a wallet unless folded and was worth five pounds. The five-pound note was a large stiff piece of pure white paper. A guinea, named after the gold-rich Guinea coast, was worth a pound and a shilling. Although old British currency was based on the pound sterling as it is today, there were dozens of denominations for values above and below it.Ībove the pound were the guinea and the five-pound note. So what was money like in the 1940s? In the days of Winston Churchill, British currency was littered with coinage. The old British currency system was in use even long before Churchill’s early years. ![]() īefore Decimal Day, British was a lot more complex. That date was known as Decimal Day and officially marked the end of the old British currency. But the decimal currency system was only adopted by the United Kingdom in the 15 th of February 1971. Today, one pound is worth one hundred pence or pennies, easily divisible by powers of ten. The current decimal system relies on units of ten to divide currency. ![]() Understanding how money worked in the 1940s can help you and other modern readers reconnect with the world as it was in Churchill’s day.Įxplore the history of British currency, what was it like before the advent or decimalisation and discover the buying power of the British shilling. The currency of Churchill’s England was a far cry from the currency you use today. Have you ever wondered how much is a shilling worth? Are you curious about what money was like in decades past? Have you ever thought about what day-to-day expenses were in the days before the Iron Curtain fell across Europe? ![]()
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