Newsletter: August 2023

The Game Fair

At the beginning of the month the Museum’s Information and Research Manager, Chris Barker, attended the Game Fair at Ragley Hall with colleagues from the Royal Mint. The Game Fair is an annual event celebrating British field sports and country life. Over the course of the weekend event he took part in a series of Q&A sessions that focussed on the history of the Royal Mint and the British coinage. The Museum team regularly attend events of this sort as part of our ongoing work telling the story of the Royal Mint. Everything that the Mint produces draws upon its 1,100 years of history, and we are privileged to act as its custodians and storytellers.

Newport Ship

The Museum team were lucky enough to host a visit from some of the Newport Culture and Heritage Team and the Friends of the Newport Ship. A few months ago, our team spent a wonderful day having a tour of the Newport Ship and the Newport Museum and Art Gallery, so we were glad to be able to show our collection and discuss opportunities to work in collaboration in the future. We were able to show their team highlights of our collection including tooling and our library, we talked through our exciting reminiscence box project, short story competition and some of the interesting things we get to do and experience. It’s no wonder the Newport team described the Royal Mint Museum as “an exciting place to work!".

Mary Rose

Another maritime-themed event in the last month was a visit from the team at The Mary Rose. We were able to talk through the background and processes involved in some of their cutting-edge exhibits such as their VR experience “Our Silent World” and links between our collections. The Mary Rose team were excited about seeing coinage from the ship’s golden age and really enjoyed our Crowned exhibition at the Royal Mint Experience.

Daniel Rignall

This month, the Museum was joined by Midlands4Cities Doctoral Candidate Daniel Rignall, who has been working on the Museum’s cataloguing and research projects. Daniel’s research expertise is the interpretation of the Bible in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and his work lends valuable context to our coins of the same period. Monarchs such as James I, Charles I, and Charles II used a variety of biblical inscriptions on their high value coins, often alluding to the political troubles of the era and the Divine right of kings. Daniel’s work intersects with that of the Museum, and his ongoing research will result in articles and content for the Museum’s website. Daniel also catalogued many of the Museum’s medals and dies from the period, contributing to the Museum’s ongoing inventory and cataloguing project, and getting unparalleled first-hand experience of the historic items involved in the production of these coins.