35 



PAPERS EEAD AT THE CONVERSAZIONE. 



ON SOME PLUMBAGO COINING-MOULDS FOUND AT NETHEE.- 

 WASDALE, 



By R. S. Febguso^j, M.A. 



(This Paper is given iu abstract, the author having been requested by the 

 Association to communicate it in full to the Cumberland and Westmoreland Anti- 

 quarian and Archceological Society.) 



When my friend ilr. Jackson invited me to be present here to-night 

 and to give a short address, he further furnished me with the text of my ad- 

 dress in the shaj^e of a mould of phmibago, whose halves have cut on their 

 inside the obverses and reverses of some English coins. This mould was 

 found in Api'il, 186-5, in a small cairn of stones in a straggling oak coppice 

 a little outside the village of Netherwasdale, and near to the river Irt. 

 It is composed of two blocks of pure Cumberland plumbago, one weighing 

 5oz. 3dr., and the other weighing 5oz. 7dr. 



The fact that these blocks are blocks of pure Cumberland plumbago 

 is a proof of the genuineness of the discovery, for that material is now 

 both rare and expensive, the mines having been closed for many years. 

 The mould, when open, exhibits the dies of the obverses and reverses oj 

 five coins. The largest coin is a groat of either Edward IV. or Richard 

 III. The second coin, in point of size, is the half-groat, exactly suuilar 

 to, but smaller than, the groat. The other three coins are all the same, 

 and are silver pennies of Henry VII. 



We now know all that can be known about these moulds. They are 

 the tools of some coiner, who lived in the early part of the reign of 

 Henry VII. 



