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18th Century, Stowe, Skidmore’s Farthing, 1796, Hermitage building with tree and grass in foreground, rev. built anno domo 1704 within two concentric circles, edge plain, 3.78g/1h (DH 29). Good extremely fine with much original colour, of the highest rarity with this edge and the only specimen known to the cataloguer (£800-1,000)

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Preston-Morley Buckinghamshire Collection: Tokens.

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Collection

Provenance:
W Longman Collection, Glendining Auction, 12-13 March 1958, lot 9;
bt Baldwin September 1974. See Colour Plate III

The type was published in Virtuoso’s Companion, 159:1, 24 December 1796; the rev. die formed the centre of the rev. of Skidmore’s St Andrew’s, Holborn, halfpenny (DH Middlesex 595).

The building shown on the token is the Hermitage, designed and built by William Kent in 1731; the depiction shown is a mirror image taken from an engraving by G.L. Smith in Gardens of Stowe, published by Benton Seeley in 1768. A copy of Robert Taylor’s article, ‘Stowe and the Stowe Farthing,’ is sold with the lot