Out with the old – in with the new

Decimalisation, having currency based on simple multiples of 10 and 100, only affected loose change.

The pound was exactly the same before and after 1971.

But the conversion involved going from 240 old pencein£1to100.

Within the complicated old system there were 12 pennies in a shilling (5p) and 20 shillings to £1.

It made adding up the three parts of the currency, with their awkward sums, harder.

Pounds, shillings and pence, (£sd), can be traced back to the times of the Romans when they divided their money into librum, solidus and denarius.

But by the 20th century Britain was being swept into the conversion by an increasingly strong tide.

France and the United States started their decimal currency in the 1790s and by the 1960s some of Britain’s own Commonwealth countries, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, did the same.

Britain changing too was seen as making its international trade easier.

Finally, in 1966, Prime Minster Harold Wilson’s Labour government announced in Parliament that the changeover in the UK would happen.

It started gradually with the first decimal coins, the 5p and 10p, coming into circulation in April 1968.

Because they were the same size and value as their predecessors, the one shilling (‘bob’) and two shillings (‘two bob’/florin), both types were legal tender for decades.

That came to an end as late as the 1990s when smaller, lighter 5ps and 10ps came in.

The sixpence (‘tanner’/2.5p) was also able to stay in circulation until 1980.

The 50p coin was introduced in October 1969 to replace the 10 shilling note, which went out of circulation in November 1970.

The old halfpenny was withdrawn in July 1969 and the half-crown (2s 6d/12.5p) went out that December.

All this was part of easing in the transition.

The copper New Pence, the 1/2p, 1p and 2p, came into circulation on Decimal Day itself, (Feb 15, 1971).

The old pennies and thruppences were used with them side by side and then withdrawn in August 1971, completing the decimalisation process.