SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

It's 45 years since the abolition of pounds,shillings and pence so only forum
members of a certain age will remember it.

My main recollection and first encounter of the new coinage was on the bus.
You gave the conductor £sd and he gave you the change in new pence.
I think he had a chart to work off and possibly a "minder"

I still occasionally revert to £sd comparisons,petrol is a prime example.
Roughly 4.5 litres to the gallon,a 2 pence difference means 9p difference or 1/9d a gallon so
I think decimalisation fuelled inflation very quickly,some of the wide boys hiked the prices and blamed it
on the new currency,many people mainly the elderly took some time to adapt.

Anyone else remember the early days of the new pence?

On this day in 1971 I was working in Cyprus and didn't return to the UK until 1973 so I missed all the fun of the changeover. Everything was all sorted by the time I returned and I can tell you that I didn't miss hauling all the big copper pennies and half crowns about, the downside was that everything had seemed to increase in price quite dramatically.

If anyone is interested in decimalisation then this link may be of interest

http://www.royalmint.com/discover/decimalisation

I remember the half pence coin more were thrown away than were spent.

Error (am having a bad day)

I was 6, so I remember the introduction - and still have a presentation set of coins that were bought for me.

I worked Fridays and Saturdays for my Pal at his Greengrocery business in Morley Market when he decided to retire to Jersey. he offered for me to buy him out and knowing it was a good chance I sold my house in Beeston and moved into rented property with my family and took over the business. This was just after Decimalisation had begun and most folks were confused. the older people were the most vulnerable and confused with this "Funny / Toy town " money and some ladies just held out their open purses and said help yourself.
My biggest problem was as prior to taking over I had to go to Pontefract Lane Wholesale Fruit Market with him and learn the art of buying the goods. what would have been hard enough to anyway was complicated by weights changing from Lbs. and Ounces to Kilo's Gramms etc. Anyway it all fell into place in time.

On a personal note I never liked it but it's was callled Progress. !!!

I remember getting my first "new money" as change from David Cochrane, a Beeston shopkeeper who some older folk may remember as a former Leeds Utd winger.

Apologies, Error.

volvojack wrote:

TABBYCAT wrote:I remember getting my first "new money" as change from David Cochrane, a Beeston shopkeeper who some older folk may remember as a former Leeds Utd winger.

I remember him, was it a Newsagents, Beeston Road or Hill ?

He had three Newsagents over the years. One in Lady pit Lane, one at the top of Greenmount St then his last one on Lodge Lane.

The Lady Pit Lane one can be found here on Leodis.

http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL