½ Penny Cambridgeshire - Industry Has Its Sure Reward

Reverse

Cloaked druid bust in profile looking right, legend around, date below, beaded border.

Script: Latin

Lettering:
CURRENT IN THE COUNTIES OF
1795

Engraver: William Wyon

Edge

Plain with incuse legend

Note: varieties exist (see below)

Script: Latin

Lettering: CAMBRIDGE BEDFORD · AND HUNTINGDON · X · X

Comment

Engraver - William Wyon. Manufacturer - Peter Kempson.

 The recurring theme of the industrious hive: Legends help to understand this symbol of the hive: this face work, industriousness and sense of savings, the co-operation of all individuals for common prosperity. Anthropomorphic qualities already put forward for centuries, and which will triumph in the nineteenth century when, for example, almost all the European savings banks adopt the hive and bees as symbols of their business. On an iconographic level, note that the hive shown here is a model taken almost without change by dozens of tokens issuers in very different regions of the UK. There is also the model of a small hive overcoming business figure; and rarer is a beehive surrounded by various flowers and plants.

Interesting fact