Having worked in PR and marketing for all of my adult life, it is rare indeed to discover something that is genuinely new about an historic hotel, something which even the tourism authorities would not have known about.
So imagine my excitement when working with the sales team on a local marketing project to promote the newly re-badged Castle Hotel Windsor, part of the MGallery Collection by Sofitel. We were tipped off about a possible coin - The Pennington Penny - by Accor’s VP of Marketing and working closely with the hotel’s sales team, we started on a voyage of discovery which lead us eventually to the British Museum of all places. Talking with the British Museum’s UK Coin Curator, this is what we discovered.
In 1644 - 1672, the small change of England and Wales was suppressed due to a collapse of confidence in it as a result of over-issue and massive counterfeiting. There was therefore no provision in the country for low-value money and if you add in the distractions of the English Civil War (1642 – 1651), you can see the problems this would have caused for a market economy and a small business such as The Castle Hotel, originally known as The Mermaid Inn. Ordinary people would have found it very difficult to find the means of maintaining their everyday existence.
So, to fill in this gap, many civic corporations and businesses issued their own coins or tokens. Spreading only as far as the knowledge of the business, they contained information which was very local in nature: from the names of the issuer, the business they were involved in, their address and the token’s value.
The Pennington Penny was issued by the entrepreneurial Innkeeper of the Mermaid Inn – one George Pennington – in Windsor in 1656. His customers would have paid him with larger denomination official coinage and he would have been given their change in part in tokens (The Pennington Penny). These tokens could then be used not only in the premises of George Pennington but would also have been accepted by other local traders who knew of Pennington’s business. So in a town the size of Windsor, they would have likely been accepted by a number of other businesses. It wasn’t until 1672 and the proclamation of a new copper coinage by Charles II that a halt was made to the practice of issuing tokens.
There is only one remaining copy of The Pennington Penny in existence (to our knowledge) and this is kept in the vaults of the British Museum.
So - the successful relaunch of Castle Hotel, Windsor also unearthed a little gem of history which had been forgotten by the good folk of of the Royal Borough. Loving history as I do, you can only imagine how fortunate we feel here at Magellan to have been part of the team who recovered and added another paragraph to Windsor’s long and illustrious history. It’s been a very satisfying project all around - and of course, this little historical nugget is unique to the hotel. When you visit, an enlarged copy of the coin is hung proudly in the reception area.
Contributor: Sue Lowry
Images: Courtesy of Castle Hotel Windsor and Windsor photographer Maureen McLean. Shown above: Actor Toby from Penguin Events who cleverly re-enacted the history of The Pennington Penny on the evening of the re-launch.
Magellan PR is on twitter: @MagellanPR / on Facebook: MagellanPR / on Pinterest: Sue Lowry / on Google+: Sue Lowry & MagellanPR and on Flickr: Sue Lowry. For more information on our company, visit www.magellan-pr.com. Follow our other blog focussing on travel in the South of England – A3 Traveller. Follow A3Traveller on Twitter: @A3Traveller.