X-Nico

10 unusual facts about Royal Mint


Charles Curtis Craig

Craig first stood for Parliament at a by-election in 1903 for the South Antrim constituency, after the sitting Unionist MP William Ellison-Macartney had left the Commons to take up the post of Deputy-Master of the Royal Mint.

Flag of the Colony of Aden

A navy blue flag with the Union jack in the top left corner, it featured a badge like that of colonial Zanzibar, with a two-masted Arab dhow sailing on turquoise waters, designed by George Kruger-Gray of the Royal Mint.

Flagstaff Gardens

Diagonally opposite stands the Victorian branch of the Royal Mint, established 7 August 1869.

Perth Mint

After the foundation stone was laid in 1896 by Sir John Forrest, the Mint opened on 20 June 1899 as a branch of the Royal Mint in London to refine gold and manufacture gold sovereigns and half sovereigns to be used as currency in the colony.

During the 19th Century, three branches of the Royal Mint of London were established in the Australian colonies to refine gold from the gold rushes and to mint gold sovereigns and half-sovereigns for the British Empire.

United Kingdom and the euro

However, as national variation is a requisite of euro coins, it remains an option for the Royal Mint to incorporate the symbols of the Home Nations into its designs for the British national sides of euro coinage.

The United Kingdom released new coin designs in 2008 following the Royal Mint's biggest redesign of the national currency since decimalisation in 1971.

Walter Rosenhain

On the advice of his professor he took up the microscopic examination of metals, and spent some time at the Royal Mint studying the technique of his new work.

William Chaloner

The machine-struck silver coins produced by the Royal Mint in the Tower of London after 1662 were protected from clipping by an engraved, decorated and milled edge, but were instead forged, both by casting from counterfeit moulds and by die stamping from counterfeit dies.

William Chandler Roberts-Austen

He was appointed Assistant to the Master of the Mint and then Chemist of the Royal Mint (1869), Professor of Metallurgy at the School of Mines (1880) and Chemist and Assayer to the Royal Mint (1882–1902).


Adam Eckfeldt

In 1833, Peale was sent on a tour of European mints and came home with ideas for new machines and innovations, including the introduction of steam power, used at Britain's Royal Mint since 1810 on equipment purchased from the firm of Boulton & Watt.

Grand Embassy of Peter the Great

On invitation of William III, Peter and part of the mission also went to England in January 1698, where the tsar, visited Gilbert Burnet and Edmond Halley in the Royal Observatory, the Royal Mint, the Royal Society the University of Oxford, and several shipyards and artillery plants.

Thomas Simon

In 1645 he was appointed by the parliament joint chief engraver along with Edward Wade, and, having executed the great seal of the Commonwealth and dies for the coinage, he was promoted to be chief engraver to the mint and seals.

William Henry James Blakemore

William Henry James Blakemore * in 1871 in the West Midlands Birmingham, England is an English engraver, and medallist at the Royal Mint London.