THE ROYAL MINT'S 60 YEARS IN WALES

 

It was an unpopular quandary which successive governments dodged for over a century, but on 1 March 1966, Prime Minister Harold Wilson finally grasped the nettle... Britain would be going decimal.

£1 would no longer be worth 240d, but 100 new pence.

Nowhere was the upheaval felt more strongly than in the south Wales valleys where a 38-acre site was created in Llantrisant so the Royal Mint could meet demand for the new currency.

Since then, it has continued to adapt to the times, facing the challenge of an increasingly cashless society by diversifying into jewellery, commemorative coins and medals and even reclaiming precious metals from E-waste.

Once the decision was made, next came logistics - where would all these coins be made?

Chris Barker, Royal Mint historian, said Belfast and Durham were also frontrunners, but "in many respects, Llantrisant was regarded as the lesser of several evils".

"From a civil engineering perspective Llantrisant was hopeless - the ground was hilly and boggy, and really difficult to locate heavy machinery."

Importantly, it did have several things going for it.

These included its relative proximity to London by rail and the M4, experience of former workers from the tin and copper industries in south Wales and the backing of Chancellor and Cardiff MP, James Callaghan.

In a rare example of management and worker solidarity, Jack James – deputy royal mint master – opined that it would be difficult to entice overseas clients to Durham, while the London workforce, many of whom would have to relocate, called Llantrisant "the least obnoxious of all the sites under consideration".

Spades were in the ground by 1967 and Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the site in December 1968.

By decimalisation day on 15 February 1971, it was already producing 80% of all new coins.

To read the complete article (subscription required), see:
Royal Mint - 60 years since new money rolled into Wales (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cde4lwngkx6o)

Also:
How being 'the least obnoxious choice' brought the Royal Mint to Wales 60 years ago (https://www.aol.com/news/being-least-obnoxious-choice-brought-133240701.html)

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