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England. Worcester. Conder Token
1811 Copper Penny Conder Token 35mm (27.79 grams)
CIVITAS IN BELLO IN PACE FIDELIS, Arms of the city of Worcester within inner circle, legend around.
WORCESTER CITY AND COUNTY TOKEN VALUE ONE PENNY 1811, Central denomination within laurel wreath.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
 Worcester is a cathedral city in Worcestershire, England, 30 miles (48 km) south-west of Birmingham, 101 miles (163 km) west-north-west of London, 27 miles (43 km) north of Gloucester and 23 miles (37 km) north-east of Hereford. The population is about 100,000. The River Severn flanks the western side of the city centre, which is overlooked by Worcester Cathedral. The Battle of Worcester in 1651 was the final battle of the English Civil War, where Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army defeated King Charles II’s Royalists. Worcester is known as the home of Royal Worcester Porcelain, composer Edward Elgar, Lea & Perrins, makers of traditional Worcestershire sauce, University of Worcester, and Berrow’s Worcester Journal, claimed to be the world’s oldest newspaper.
After the Restoration in 1660, Worcester cleverly used its location as the site of the final battles of the First Civil War (1646) and Third Civil War (1651) to mount an appeal for compensation from Charles II. Though unbased on historical fact, it invented the epithet Fidelis Civitas (The Faithful City), since included in the city’s coat of arms.
The Guildhall rebuilt in 1721 to replace an earlier one on the site is a Grade I listed Queen Anne-style building described by Pevsner as a town hall “as splendid as any of C18 England”.
Worcester’s historic bridge was replaced on 17 September 1781 at a cost of £29,843 including its approaches. As the city population expanded, the green areas between the main streets filled with housing and back streets, so that the extent of the city and suburbs remained much the same as in the early 1600s. Large stretches of the city walls had been removed by 1796. Meanwhile, the Royal Worcester Porcelain Company factory was founded by Dr John Wall in 1751. Production continued until 2009. A handful of decorators are still employed at the factory, and the museum on the site remains open. Since 2015 there has been re-development there devoted to housing.
Industrial revolution and Victorian era
 Worcester in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was a major centre for glove making, employing nearly half the glovers in England at its peak (over 30,000 people). In 1815 the Worcester and Birmingham Canal opened, allowing Worcester goods to be transported more easily.
Riots took place in 1831, in response to the defeat of the Reform Bill, reflecting discontent with the city administration and the wider lack of democratic representation. Riots occurred elsewhere, including Bristol. Local government reform took place in 1835, which for the first time created election procedures for councillors, but also restricted the ability of the city to buy and sell property, requiring Treasury permission.
Up until 1835, the legal distinction between a select group of citizens with specific privileges and other residents of the town had survived.
The British Medical Association (BMA) was founded in the Board Room of the old Worcester Royal Infirmary building in Castle Street in 1832. While part of the Royal Infirmary has now been demolished to make way for the University of Worcester’s new city campus, the original Georgian building has been preserved. One of the old wards opened as a medical museum, the Infirmary, in 2012.
Railways opened in Worcester in 1850, with Shrub Hill, jointly owned by the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway and Midland Railway, initially running to Birmingham only. Foregate Street was opened in 1860 by the Hereford and Worcester Railway, quickly incorporated into the West Midland Railway. The WMR lines became part of the Great Western Railway after 1 August 1863. The railways also gave Worcester thousands of jobs with the just under half of all GWR passenger coaches built in Worcester and the three signalling factories including the largest railway signalling company in the World: McKenzie & Holland.
In 1882 Worcester hosted the Worcestershire Exhibition, inspired by the Great Exhibition in London. There were sections for exhibits of fine arts (over 600 paintings), historical manuscripts and industrial items. The profit was £1,867.9s.6d. The number of visitors is recorded as 222,807. Some of the profit from the exhibition was used to build the Victoria Institute in Foregate Street, Worcester. This was opened on 1 October 1896 and originally housed the city art gallery and museum; now located on Foregate Street.
Conder Tokens, also known as 18th Century Provincial Tokens, are a form of privately minted token coinage struck and used during the latter part of the 18th Century and the early part of the 19th Century in England, Anglesey and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.
The driving force behind the need for token coinage was the shortage of small denomination coins for everyday transactions. However, the demand was fueled by other factors such as the Industrial Revolution, population growth, and the preponderance of counterfeit circulating coins. Because the government made little effort to ameliorate this shortage, private business owners and merchants took matters into their own hands, and the first tokens of this type were issued in 1787 to pay workers at the Parys Mine Company. By 1795, millions of tokens of a few thousand varying designs had been struck and were in common use throughout Great Britain.
Collecting Conder tokens has been popular since shortly after they were first manufactured, resulting in the availability today of many highly preserved examples for collectors. The demarcation of what is or is not considered a Conder token is somewhat unclear; however, most collectors consider Conder tokens to include those indexed originally by James Conder or later by Dalton & Hamer.
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