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Dr Martin Allen

Senior Curator Medieval Money

After a career in local government and research for a PhD thesis in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University (published as The Durham Mint in 2003), Martin Allen was appointed to the Department of Coins and Medals at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1997, where he is now Senior Curator Medieval Money.

He administers the Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds (EMC), and he teaches numismatics and medieval monetary history to students of History and Archaeology. He is an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of History and a College Research Associate of Wolfson College, and in 2013 he received the degree of Doctor of Letters (LittD) in recognition of his published research.

He is the author of two books and about 100 other publications, and the editor of the British Numismatic Journal.

Sole-authored volumes

Mints and Money in Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

The Durham Mint, British Numismatic Society Special Publication 4 (London, 2003).

Articles, essays and edited volumes

‘The Calais mint and the wool trade’, in M. Allen and N. Mayhew (eds), Money and its Use in Medieval Europe Three Decades On. Essays in Honour of Professor Peter Spufford, Royal Numismatic Society Special Publication 52 (London, 2017), pp. 31−42.

‘The first Sterling Area’, Economic History Review 70 (2017), pp. 79−100.

‘Medieval merchants and the English mints’, in M. Allen and M. Davies (eds), Medieval Merchants and Money. Essays in Honour of James L. Bolton (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2016), pp. 197−212.

‘The York local coinage of the reign of Stephen (1135−54)’, Numismatic Chronicle 176 (2016), pp. 283−318.

‘Coin finds and the English money supply, c. 973–1544’, in M. Allen and D. Coffman (eds), Money, Prices and Wages: Essays in Honour of Professor Nicholas Mayhew (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), pp. 7–23.

‘Coin hoards in England and Wales, c. 973–1544’, in J. Naylor and R. Bland (eds), Hoarding and the Deposition of Metalwork from the Bronze Age to the 20th Century: a British Perspective, British Archaeological Reports British Series 615 (Oxford, 2015), pp. 147–65.

‘Currency depreciation and debasement in medieval Europe’, in W. Ernst and D. Fox (eds), Money in the Western Legal Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 41–52. 

‘Coinage and currency under William I and William II’, in R. Naismith, M. Allen and E. Screen (eds), Early Medieval Monetary History: Studies in Memory of Mark Blackburn (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 85–112.

‘The English Crown and the coinage, 1399–1485’, in L. Clark (ed.), The Fifteenth Century XIII (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), pp. 183–99.

‘The mints of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian England, 871–1066’, in Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Susan D. Thompson (eds), Towns and Topography. Essays in Memory of David H. Hill (Oxford: Oxbow, 2014), pp. 68–73.

‘The currency and the economy in late medieval England’, Yorkshire Numismatist 4 (2012), pp. 175–82.

‘Mints and money in Norman England’, in D. Bates (ed.), Anglo-Norman Studies XXXIV. Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2011 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012), pp. 1–21.

‘The mints and moneyers of England and Wales, 1066–1158’, British Numismatic Journal 82 (2012), pp. 54–120.

‘The Winchester mint and exchange, 1158–1250’, in M. Biddle (ed.), The Winchester Mint and Coins and Related Finds from the Excavations of 196171, Winchester Studies 8 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012), pp. 56–65.

‘Silver production and the money supply in England and Wales, 1086–c.1500’, Economic History Review 64 (2011), pp. 114–31.

‘The exchanges in the City of London, 1344–1538’, in Proceedings of the XIVth International Numismatic Congress Glasgow 2009, edited by N. Holmes, 2 vols (Glasgow: International Numismatic Council, 2011), pp. 1355–9.

‘The output and profits of the Calais mint, 1349–1450’, British Numismatic Journal 80 (2010), pp. 131–9.

‘A thirteenth-century enquiry into the administration of the Bury St Edmunds mint’, British Numismatic Journal 80 (2010), pp. 189–93.

‘Monthly mint output figures for the coinage of Richard III’, Numismatic Chronicle 169 (2009), pp. 213–15.

‘Henry II and the English coinage’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, edited by C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2007), pp. 257–77.

‘The proportions of the denominations in English mint outputs, 1351–1485’, British Numismatic Journal 77 (2007), pp. 190–209.

‘The Cambridge mint after the Norman Conquest’, Numismatic Chronicle 166 (2006), pp. 237–44.

‘The English coinage of 1153/4–1158’, British Numismatic Journal 76 (2006), pp. 242–302.

‘The volume of the English currency, c. 973–1158’, in Coinage and History in the North Sea World, c. AD 5001200. Essays in Honour of Marion Archibald, edited by B. Cook and G. Williams (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), pp. 485–523.

‘The fourteenth-century hoard from Chesterton Lane Corner, Cambridge’, British Numismatic Journal 75 (2005), pp. 63–90.

‘The interpretation of single-finds of English coins, 1279–1544’, British Numismatic Journal 75 (2005), pp. 50–62.

‘The quantity of money in England 1180–1247: new data’, British Numismatic Journal 75 (2005), pp. 44–9.

‘The archbishop of York’s mint after the Norman Conquest’, Northern History 41 (2004), pp. 21–34.

‘The English currency and the commercialization of England before the Black Death’, in Medieval Money Matters, edited by D. Wood (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2004), pp. 31–50.

‘Medieval English die-output’, British Numismatic Journal 74 (2004), pp. 39–49.

‘English coin hoards, 1158–1544’, British Numismatic Journal 72 (2002), pp. 24-84.

‘Italians in English mints and exchanges’, in Fourteenth Century England II,  edited by C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2002), pp. 53–62.

‘Ecclesiastical mints in thirteenth-century England’, in Thirteenth Century England VIII: Proceedings of the Durham Conference 1999, edited by M. Prestwich, R. Britnell and R. Frame (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001), pp. 113–22.

‘The volume of the English currency, 1158–1470’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 54 (2001), pp. 595–611.

‘Ecclesiastical mints in fifteenth-century England’, Numismatic Chronicle 160 (2000), pp. 249–59.

‘The volume and composition of the English silver currency, 1279–1351’, British Numismatic Journal 70 (2000), pp. 38–44.

‘Mint output in the English recoinage of 1247–1250’, British Numismatic Journal 69 (1999), pp. 207–10.

‘Documentary evidence for the output, profits and expenditure of the Bury St Edmunds mint’, British Numismatic Journal 69 (1999), pp. 210–13.

‘Documentary evidence for the Henry VI Annulet coinage of York’, British Numismatic Journal 65 (1995), pp. 120–34.

‘The Durham mint before Boldon Book’, in D. Rollason, M. Harvey and M. Prestwich (eds), Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193 (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 38198.

‘The provision and use of Short Cross class V dies’, British Numismatic Journal 59 (1989), pp. 46–76.

‘The Carlisle and Durham mints in the Short Cross period’, British Numismatic Journal 49 (1979), pp. 42–55.

  • Wolfson College, Faculty of History, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

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