page_title: History of the halfpenny
section_title: The United Kingdom
hierarchical_section_title: History of the halfpenny / The United Kingdom
caption_attribution_description: English: Britannia emblem extracted from William Hogarth's Plate 8: In The Madhouse engraving from A Rake's Progress, after he retouched it in 1763.
context_page_description: The British halfpenny coin was worth 1/480th of a pound sterling. At first in its 700-year history it was made from silver but as the value of silver increased, the coin was made from base metals. It was finally abandoned in 1969 as part of the process of decimalising the British currency. "Halfpenny", colloquially written ha'penny, was pronounced HAY-pə-nee; "1 ½d" was spoken as a penny ha'penny or three ha'pence.
  It was long considered that the first halfpenny coins were produced in the reign of King Edward I, with earlier requirements for small change being provided by "cut coinage"; that is, pennies cut into halves or quarters, usually along the cross which formed a prominent part of the reverse of the coin. However, in recent years metal detectorists have discovered a few halfpennies of Kings Henry I and Henry III – these are extremely rare and very little is known about them; they have all been found in the London area, where they circulated alongside the more common cut coinage, and while it is possible that these coins were patterns or trials, it is clear that they did see circulation.
context_section_description: Soon after the accession of King George I (1714–1727) the surplus of copper coins was used up, and in 1717 a new contract was signed and a Royal Warrant issued for the production of a new halfpenny. The halfpennies struck in 1717 and 1718 looked slightly odd as they were smaller, thicker and somewhat lighter than the previous issues, weighing 9.4–10.3 grams with a diameter of 25–27 millimetres, but they were well-struck with high-relief features of the right-facing head of King George and the inscription GEORGIVS REX on the obverse, and Britannia with the inscription BRITANNIA and the date in the exergue beneath Britannia. The 1717–1718 issue is known as the dump halfpenny. For the 1719–1724 issue, the size of the coin was increased to 26–29 millimetres, though with the same weight of metal as before.
  King George II's (1727–1760) halfpennies were the most prolific issue yet, but to them must be added a huge range of counterfeits (and pieces similar to counterfeits but with markedly different legends from the real coins, so that the manufacturers could avoid accusations of counterfeiting). Many genuine coins were melted down and underweight fabrications produced from the molten metal. It is difficult for those of us who use a modern regulated currency to appreciate the extent to which counterfeiting had debased the currency – for long periods of time, counterfeits outnumbered genuine coins. Halfpennies were produced in all years between 1729 and 1754, with the exception of 1741. They weighed 9.7–10.3 grams and had a diameter of 28–30 millimetres. The obverse showed the left-facing head of King George and the inscription GEORGIVS II REX on the obverse, and Britannia with the inscription BRITANNIA and the date in the exergue beneath Britannia.
caption: Hogarth engraved this Britannia emblem with a possibly similar appearance to that of the later coins when he retouched one of his plates.
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