The Winchester Mint and Coins and Related Finds from the Excavations of 1961-71. Winchester Studies 8. Edited by Martin Biddle.
The Catalogue of Coins of the Winchester Mint. by Yvonne Harvey. Frontis, xli + 725pp, 123 b/w pls, 30 figs, 37 tables. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2012. Hardback, £100.

Winchester (developed from the Roman Venta Belgarum) has always been an important city, formerly the capital of England until some time after the Norman Conquest, capital of Wessex and then second only to London. It was established by King Egbert in 827 as his main city, and sacked by the Danes in 860. Its cathedral, originally built in 1079, has the longest nave and overall length of all the Gothic cathedrals in Europe and houses the shrine of St Swithin, bishop of Winchester in the mid-ninth century.

The excavations between 1961 to 1972, directed by Professor Martin Biddle, was the largest programme of archaeological excavation undertaken in a British city. It comprised the story of the city over 2000 years, from the Iron Age, through Roman, Anglo-Saxon and medieval times down to the emergence of the Victorian city – and the street plan still follows much as it was it Alfred’s day.

The Winchester Research Unit was set up by the Executive Committee in 1968 to complete the excavations and historical record and to publish the findings in a series, ‘Winchester Studies’, in 11 volumes, several of which are multi-parted. The Winchester Mint is Winchester Studies 8 and will be followed by the volume on the Anglo-Saxon Minsters (the volumes are not published seriatim but as available and appropriate).

This book is not only a major contribution to the study of the issues of the Winchester mint over a period of 400 years but also to the study of Anglo-Saxon numismatics in the specific context of Winchester and also the wider application to economics and England overall. The obverse and reverses of 330 Winchester mint coins are illustrated and have been gathered from public and private collections worldwide. It all began with the discovery of a silver penny of William II’s second issue in July 1961, the first season of a decade of excavations. It was only days later that a small hoard of 20 Long Cross pennies was found. That had probably been buried c. 1265 due to the sack of Winchester by Simon de Montfort. King Alfred had struck the first coins at Winchester in the 880s or 890s, and the mint then stayed open and operating for the next 400 years until closing in 1250. The standard of the coins had reached such a parlous state that in 1124 Henry II summoned the nation’s moneyers to Winchester to answer for this. The error of their ways was drastically pointed out to them when they were mutilated, some say castrated. The number of Winchester mint moneyers from the reforms of Edgar c. 973 to

The bulk of the book is taken up by the exhaustive catalogue of the Winchester mint coins by Yvonne Harvey, and the information has been culled from public and private collections worldwide. It is a die study of the (known) surviving mint-signed coins arranged chronologically by reign followed by the alphabetical list of moneyer The Winchester mint signature was PIN (the ‘P’ being the Anglo-Saxon for ‘W’). The combination of obverse and reverse dies, each with a continuous catalogue serial number, is recorded for each moneyer, and each entry records the present whereabouts of the coin, its weight in grams, die axis and diameter, with an asterisk to note those examples illustrated. It represents an incredible labour of scholarship coupled with an eye and knowledge of the series as coins were identified in the many collections visited. Of particular note is the fact that evidence has emerged of an extensive sharing of obverse dies, notable in the Long Cross re-coinage of 1257-50, and that some Winchester moneyers also worked at Southampton.

For convenience and ease of access the book is divided into two parts. Part 1, The Winchester Mint, is essentially the mint’s coin catalogue (over 500 pages), but it includes several important essays addressing a number of relevant issues: an introduction and statistical analysis; the mint and exchange; the place name of Winchester itself, and an index of moneyers, die-links, hoards and other finds.

Part 2 covers other numismatic items found in the excavations in separate short essays. They include jettons, three repoussé foils imitating Arabic coins, various lead seals and sealings of Byzantine origin, three Papal bullae, and a Jewish counter or token. The context of the coins, problems of residuality and dating, put the numismatic catalogue and contents into perspective. Obviously the focus of the book is the Winchester coins but having them set into their context in Anglo-Saxon England brings a whole new dimension to the study. The information in the essays here are relevant and important to the whole study of the economics and coin usage of the period in England.

This a major study of an individual Anglo-Saxon mint which will be a worthy template for any similar studies, and they are much needed as considerable new light is being thrown on Anglo-Saxon England where money, its control and circulation was an essential part of the economy.

Peter A. Clayton