Growing up in Sunderland: When the money changed - what you remember about Decimal Day
It was the day our money changed forever.
This month marks 55 years since Decimal Day in the UK and on our Wearside Echoes Facebook group, we have been talking about what you remember from when we said goodbye to the ‘old money’.
Our buying and shopping habits were transformed as the days of 12 pennies to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound ceased. But what are your earliest memories of the new coins?
Did you get the shiny new coins in your change on February 15, 1971? Or did you sit through lessons at school totting up what things would now cost? Maybe you helped your family work out the shopping.
Learn more about that milestone day in our history from the Sunderland people who remember it below.
John Alfred Spencer: “[I] left UK [in] November 1969 on £sd, arrived back UK December 1971 on decimal. A couple of years on foreign currency made it a bit easy to go decimal.”
Ann Usher: “Didn’t have enough bus fare to get home from school.”
Colin Lambert: “I was serving in the Army in West Germany at the time, didn't know about it till home on leave.”
John Turnbull: “I remember the 3d conversion cards given out everywhere.”
Owen Newsome: “I remember that prices almost doubled overnight!”
Lynne Roberts: “I can vaguely remember the old coins as decimal started when I was five and all our maths school books had the old money crossed out and replaced with decimal money.”
Gilly Bridges: “My nana who looked after us while Mam worked, never went to a shop ever again. She just could not get her head around it.”
Off to the shops
Davie Barrass: “Using a shiny 2p coin for a bag of vinegar crisps. prev 4d.”
Bernie Collins: “Going into our local fruit and veg shop and getting it in my change.”
Ian Vickers: “I remember getting six penny chews one day and only five the next.”
Jackie Urwin Alcock: “Going into the 'tuck shop' opposite my junior school to spend some new money.”
David Ellenden: “The new Curly Wurly for the first time at 3p.”
Keith Bell: “At the time I worked in Joplings department store and there were a group of staff trained to help customers understand the changes and make the transition from old to new coinage as easy as possible.”
Valerie Fox: “It was on my 7th birthday. [I] didn’t know what to buy from the sweet shop on way home from school as I didn’t know what the money meant.”
Hilary Walker Wilson: “I was working a Saturday job in Woolworths and remember February 15 very well.”
Learning the ropes
Lynne Rooney: “I remember going from learning pound, shilling and pence to having to learn decimalisation and realising you didn't get as much with the new currency.”
Tony Marshall: “I can remember learning the new coinage at school then going to my gran’s to teach her!”
Jackie Mountain: “The company I worked for did conversion instructions for handling the new currency.”
Denis Thompson: “I wrote a computer program for a company to convert to pounds and pence.”