The Brick: The Mighty Ten Shilling Note

There was a time when opening your birthday card and seeing a crisp, reddish-brown slip of paper featuring the Queen's portrait felt like winning the pools. Long before the 50p coin arrived to take its place, the ten shilling note—lovingly known as a "ten-bob note"—was the ultimate symbol of childhood wealth. In the 1960s, if you had one of these tucked in your pocket on a trip to Old Poole, you weren't just a kid with pocket money; you were a mogul.

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A Fortune in Your Pocket

To understand why ten shillings made you feel "rich," you have to look at what that half-pound could actually command. In a world governed by old money, ten shillings was 120 copper pennies. It was a staggering amount of purchasing power for a Saturday afternoon.

• The High Street Haul: You could walk into a shop on The Broadway in Broadstone and come out with several Beano Books, a new Meccano accessory, and still have change for a bag of licorice Allsorts.
• The Record Collector: It was enough to buy the latest Top of the Pops cover album and perhaps a few yummy wafers to enjoy while you listened to it on the Philips radio.
• The Modeller: A ten-bob note could easily secure a large Airfix kit—maybe even the SR.N4 Hovercraft—with enough left over for a box of Swan Vesta matches to light the gas fire while you built it.

The Ritual of the "Ten Bob"

There was a tactile joy to the ten shilling note that a coin simply couldn't replicate. It had a specific, papery rustle—a "Sound of Character" as distinct as the "Parfum de Caractère" of Brut aftershave.

Holding one at the counter of J. Bright & Son while waiting for Nanny's bread felt like a serious responsibility. You’d watch the shopkeeper count out the change in heavy pennies and silver shillings, a process that required more mental math than the arithmetic tables on your school notebook.

A Bridge Between Eras

The ten-bob note belonged to the era of the milk float, red telephone kiosks, and Green Shield Stamps. It was the currency of a world where Captain Scarlet was the height of TV excitement and Cliff Richard was always on the charts.

When Decimal Day arrived in 1971, the note began its journey into the memory box, eventually replaced by the seven-sided 50p piece. By the time we were using ACT Apricot computers, the idea of a paper note for ten shillings seemed as fantastical as the whistles of The Clangers or a trip to the moon in a rocking horse.

The Legacy of the "Red 'Un"

Today, in 2026, looking at a photo of a ten shilling note is a reminder of a time when "wealth" was something you could fold and keep in your pocket. It reminds us of Saturday afternoons in Dorset, the smell of a fresh Ladybird Book, and the feeling that with ten shillings, you really could conquer the world—or at least the toy shop on the Quay.

It might be just a memory now, but what a rich memory it is.