The Harborough Bank

The Harborough Mail reports that a £10 banknote issued by Harborough Bank in 1841 has been sold at auction for £1056.

There was more about the Bank in an earlier report from the same paper:

The banknote features the names of Inkersole, Goddard and Goddard, the Harborough businessmen who owned the bank.

Barnaby Faull, head of the banknotes department at Spink, added: “All towns and cities in England used to issue their own banknotes. Merchants would get together in the town and start up their own banks but their notes – which were like IOUs – could only be used locally.”

All of which reminds one of the Lib Dem thinker David Boyle and his enthusiasm for local currencies.

Incidentally, the Harborough Bank went under a couple of years after the note was issued, but the independent Market Harborough Building Society is still going strong.