5 Pounds Sterling 1993, Kingdom of Great Britain
| in Banknotes Book | Number: BE121c |
| Years of issue: | 03.1993 |
| Edition: | -- |
| Signatures: | Chief Cashier: Mr. Graham Edward Alfred Kentfield (1991 - 1998) |
| Serie: | England |
| Specimen of: | 07.06.1990 |
| Material: | Cotton fiber |
| Size (mm): | 135 х 70 |
| Printer: | Bank of England print works, Loughton (Debden), Essex, UK |
* All pictures marked 
are increased partially by magnifying glass, the remaining open in full size by clicking on the image.
** The word "Specimen" is present only on some of electronic pictures, in accordance with banknote images publication rules of appropriate banks.
Description
Watermark:
HM The Queen Elizabeth II in young age.
Avers:
HM The Queen Elizabeth II.
In preparation for the "E Series" of notes, issued by the Bank of England, photographs of The Queen were especially commissioned by the Bank. The photographs were taken by Don Ford in 1985-1986, one of the Bank’s technical photographers, under the direction of Roger Withington. Mr. Withington designed the notes of the "E Series" and prepared the engraving of the Queen, which appeared on this series of notes, from one of the photographs taken by Mr. Ford. The portrait shows Queen Elizabeth wearing Queen Mary’s "Girls of Great Britain and Ireland" Tiara, Queen Alexandra’s cluster earrings and, although difficult to identify, Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee necklace.
The engraving on banknote is, probably, made after this photo by Don Ford, 1985-1986.
Queen Mary received this tiara as a wedding gift in 1893, from a committee representing "the girls of Great Britain and Ireland". The funds for the purchase of the tiara were raised by a committee, formed by Lady Eve Greville. The tiara was purchased from Garrard, the London jeweler.
It featured pearls on top and a detachable base; Mary removed the pearls. She gave it to her granddaughter, Princess Elizabeth, as a wedding present in 1947. The Queen originally wore it without the base before reuniting the pieces in 1969.
Said to be light and easy to wear, the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara seems to be the Queen's favorite - she's said to call it "Granny's tiara", and it is her most frequently worn diadem.
The "Girls of Great Britain and Ireland" Tiara can be worn with or without a bandeau base and, in this portrait, the tiara is set into its base. (Portrait of Dorothy Wilding, 1952, shows the Tiara being worn without the base). (From her Majesty's jewel vault)
To mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, a committee of ladies was formed to raise money for a commemorative statue of Victoria’s late husband Prince Albert. The committee’s fundraising was quite successful, and they ended up raising far more than was required for the statue. An agreement was formed with the Queen that the excess should go to the St. Katherine’s Fund for Nurses. At the same time, some members of the committee decided that a portion of the funds should be used to purchase a necklace for the Queen - and this was also approved by Her Majesty.
The trouble was, the committee did not agree on the necklace. Some felt it would be wrong to spend the funds which had been previously devoted to charity on something else. Much discussion and debate ensued, as is described in depth in Hugh Roberts’ book The Queen’s Diamonds. (My favorite tidbit: Queen Victoria, angry that she wouldn’t get her promised necklace, shot down the prospect of a diamond badge commemorating the nursing fund by declaring she would “at once exchange it for another jewel”.
In the end, a compromise was reached and this necklace, made for £5000 (far less than the necklace originally proposed) from gold, diamonds, and pearls by Carrington & Co. was presented to Queen Victoria in 1888. It features a central quatrefoil diamond motif with a large pearl in the middle, topped by a crown and underlined with a drop pearl. The next four links in either direction are graduated trefoil motifs; the central piece and the six largest trefoils can also be worn as brooches.
She is also wearing Queen Alexandra’s Cluster Earrings. The wedding gift from the future King Edward VII to his bride, Alexandra of Denmark. Also known as Queen Alexandra's Cluster Earrings, these two button earrings have large pearls surrounded by diamonds - 10 larger stones each plus smaller filler stones to create a full diamond ring. Like the brooch, these passed to the Queen via Queen Mary. They're now worn primarily at evening functions.
On the left side is a hologram window with sitting Britannia (as logo of Bank of England).
Denominations in numerals are in top and lower left corner. In center in words.
Revers:
The engraving on banknote is, probably, made after this portrait of George Stephenson.
On the right side is George Stephenson (9 June 1781 - 12 August 1848), an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer, who built the first public inter-city railway line in the world to use steam locomotives, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway which opened in 1830. Renowned as the "Father of Railways", the Victorians considered him a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement, with self-help advocate Samuel Smiles particularly praising his achievements. His rail gauge of 4 feet 8 1⁄2 inches (1,435 mm.), sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", is the standard gauge by name and by convention for most of the world's railways.
George Stephenson was born on 9 June 1781 in Wylam, Northumberland, 9 miles (15 km) west of Newcastle upon Tyne. He was the second child of Robert and Mabel Stephenson, neither of whom could read or write. Robert was the fireman for Wylam Colliery pumping engine, earning a very low wage, so there was no money for schooling. At 17, Stephenson became an engineman at Water Row Pit in Newburn. George realised the value of education and paid to study at night school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic - he was illiterate until the age of 18. In 1801 he began work at Black Callerton Colliery as a "brakesman", controlling the winding gear at the pit. In 1802 he married Frances Henderson and moved to Willington Quay, east of Newcastle. There he worked as a brakesman while they lived in one room of a cottage. George made shoes and mended clocks to supplement his income.
Dial Cottage, West Moor, Killingworth
Their son Robert was born in 1803, and in 1804 they moved to West Moor, near Killingworth where George worked as a brakesman at Killingworth Pit. George's wife, Frances, gave birth to a daughter before Robert, but she died after a few weeks, and in 1806 Frances herself died of consumption (tuberculosis). George decided to find work in Scotland and left Robert with a local woman while he went to work in Montrose. After a few months he returned, probably because his father was blinded in a mining accident. He moved back into a cottage at West Moor and his unmarried sister Eleanor moved in to look after Robert. In 1811 the pumping engine at High Pit, Killingworth was not working properly and Stephenson offered to fix it. He did so with such success that he was promoted to engine wright for the collieries at Killingworth, responsible for maintaining and repairing all the colliery engines. He became an expert in steam-driven machinery.
Cornishman Richard Trevithick is credited with the first realistic design for a steam locomotive in 1802. Later, he visited Tyneside and built an engine there for a mine-owner. Several local men were inspired by this, and designed their own engines.
Stephenson designed his first locomotive in 1814, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on the Killingworth wagonway named Blücher after the Prussian general Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. It was modelled on Matthew Murray’s locomotive Willington which George studied at Kenton and Coxlodge colliery on Tyneside and constructed in the colliery workshop behind Stephenson's home, Dial Cottage, on Great Lime Road. The locomotive could haul 30 tons of coal up a hill at 4 mph (6.4 km/h), and was the first successful flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive: its traction depended on contact between its flanged wheels and the rail. Altogether, Stephenson is said to have produced 16 locomotives at Killingworth, although it has not proved possible to produce a convincing list of all 16. Of those identified, most were built for use at Killingworth or for the Hetton colliery railway. A six-wheeled locomotive was built for the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway in 1817 but was withdrawn from service because of damage to the cast iron rails. Another locomotive was supplied to Scott's Pit railroad at Llansamlet, near Swansea in 1819 but it too was withdrawn, apparently because it was under-boilered and caused damage to the track.
The new engines were too heavy to run on wooden rails, and iron rails were in their infancy, with cast iron exhibiting excessive brittleness. Together with William Losh, Stephenson improved the design of cast iron rails to reduce breakage; rails were briefly made by Losh, Wilson and Bell at their Walker ironworks. According to Rolt, Stephenson managed to solve the problem caused by the weight of the engine on the primitive rails. He experimented with a "steam spring" (to "cushion" the weight using steam pressure), but soon followed the practice of 'distributing' weight by utilising a number of wheels. For the Stockton and Darlington Railway Stephenson used wrought iron rails, not withstanding the financial loss he suffered by not using his own patented design.
More about George Stephenson you can read here 
On the left side, on foreground, is Stephenson's Rocket.
It was an early steam locomotive of 0-2-2 wheel arrangement, designed by Robert Stephenson in 1829. It was built for and won the Rainhill Trials held by the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1829 to choose the best design to power the railway.
Though the Rocket was not the first steam locomotive, it was the first to bring together several innovations to produce the most advanced locomotive of its day.
It was built at the Forth Street Works of Robert Stephenson and Company in Newcastle upon Tyne. It is the most famous example of an evolving design of locomotives by Stephenson that became the template for most steam engines in the following 150 years.
The locomotive was preserved and is now on display in the Science Museum in London.
The locomotive had a tall smokestack chimney at the front, a cylindrical boiler in the middle, and a separate firebox at the rear. The large front pair of wooden wheels was driven by two external cylinders set at an angle. The smaller rear wheels were not coupled to the driving wheels, giving an 0-2-2 wheel arrangement.
Stephenson designed Rocket for the Rainhill trials, and the specific rules of that contest. As the first railway intended for passengers more than freight, the rules emphasised speed and would require reliability, but the weight of the locomotive was also tightly restricted. Six-wheeled locomotives were limited to six tons, four-wheeled locomotives to four and a half tons. In particular, the weight of the train expected to be hauled was to be no more than three times the actual weight of the locomotive. Stephenson realized that whatever the size of previously successful locomotives, this new contest would favour a fast, light locomotive of only moderate hauling power.
On the background (left side) is the opening procession of the Stockton and Darlington Railway crosses the Skerne bridge.
The Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) was a railway company that operated in north-east England from 1825 to 1863. The world's first public railway to use steam locomotives, its first line connected collieries near Shildon with Stockton-on-Tees and Darlington, and was officially opened on 27 September 1825. The movement of coal to ships rapidly became a lucrative business, and the line was soon extended to a new port and town at Middlesbrough. Passengers were carried in coaches drawn by horses until carriages hauled by steam locomotives were introduced in 1833.
The S&DR was involved in the building of the East Coast Main Line between York and Darlington, but its main expansion was at Middlesbrough Docks and west into Weardale and east to Redcar. It suffered severe financial difficulties at the end of the 1840s and was nearly taken over by the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway, before the discovery of iron ore in Cleveland and the subsequent increase in revenue meant it could pay its debts. At the beginning of the 1860 it took over railways that had crossed the Pennines to join the West Coast Main Line at Tebay and Clifton, near Penrith.
The company was taken over by the North Eastern Railway in 1863, transferring 200 route miles (320 km) of line and about 160 locomotives, but continued to operate independently as the Darlington Section until 1876. The opening of the S&DR was seen as proof of the effectiveness of steam railways and its anniversary was celebrated in 1875, 1925 and 1975. Much of the original route is now served by the Tees Valley Line, operated by Northern Rail.
The Skerne Bridge was designed by Ignatius Bonomi and was one of the worlds first railway bridges. It now lies sadly neglected and hard to reach behind an industrial estate, although its still in use by the railway to this day. "Hidden Teesside").
Denomination in numeral is in top left corner. In center in words.
Comments:
Designer: Roger Withington.
Metallic security thread.
On banknote have signed Mister Graham Edward Alfred Kentfield.
The 28th Chief Cashier, Graham Kentfield was born on 3 September 1940. He joined the Bank in 1963 and worked in the Economics Division. In 1985 he became Deputy Chief Cashier and was appointed Chief Cashier on 25 November 1991. After seven years in the job, he retired on 17th September 1998.
If you find my work useful I will be grateful for any help in supporting the site.
-
PayPal
-
For users of European Union banking system