I recently read a fascinating book called “Citadel of the Saxons” by Rory Naismith about the shadowy times between the departure of the Romans from 410 CE until the Norman invasion of 1066.
One of the interesting references was to Saxon coinage, struck in particular for Alfred the Great around 886, when he moved the London centre back from modern day Covent Garden area (known as Lundenwic) to the original Roman Walled “Square Mile”.
The coins he struck there commemorated London itself in a monogram, a jumble of the letters into an image, and I have now been lucky enough to obtain an example
Here firstly is the obverse with Alfred’s head, this is not a very good example but I was really interested in the other side.
And here is the monogram, composed of the letters that make up the word LONDINIA.
In case you can’t see them (it took me a while) here they are individually.
First L
Then O
N
D
I
Finally as we already have N and I is A
I absolutely love this and hope to bring it on my tours to show people, what an amazing thing and so beautiful.
