Five pound note, 1971

Harry Eccleston worked for more than 25 years as a banknote designer at the Bank of England and was best known for the series D notes, issued in 1978 and the first fully pictorial series. Eccleston’s portrait of the Queen was on the front of the notes and his drawings of Isaac Newton (£1), the Duke of Wellington (£5), Florence Nightingale (£10), Shakespeare (£20) and Christopher Wren (£50) were on the reverse. He also designed a 50-pence note bearing the figure of Sir Walter Raleigh but it was judged that, in a time of galloping inflation, the life of such a low-denomination note would be short and so a coin was minted instead. His original drawings of the Queen and of Wren were presented to her and in the same year he was appointed OBE.

Reverse Five Pound Note

The five pound note seen here features on the obverse the Queen’s portrait with the reverse featuring the first Duke of Wellington and a scene from the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro (1811) during the peninsula war.