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Sorry for the delay, it’s been a mad few days! Blimey, Rob, really sorry to hear you’ve been in with sepsis, that’s miserable. That’s a lovely halfpenny you have there, and at an excellent price, especially when the example I quote sold for £375. I did see it, but had my eye on something else. I know it’s nothing of the class of yours, but I picked up an anchor halfpenny not so long ago…plus very limiting resources are always going to force some difficult decisions. Yours is the same die as the Comber, Wilkinson & Lockett example and, what’s interesting, is what initially appears to be a double-strike of the portcullis, is actually the bottom half of it being re-entered, it’s identical on each coin. What’s also interesting, is that the oddities beneath your portcullis are less prominent on the Comber example, excepting a few dots here and there, most notably in the bottom 2 squares of the vertical righthand row. Equally the horizontal bar running under the anchor on yours, which possibly hinted at a key (if that’s what’s being referred to), is also not present on the other example. I wonder if some of what’s being seen on yours is the die becoming progressively damaged? Re your trip South, if I’m not on nights it would be great to catch up…there’s a lovely riverside Greene King pub, 1 minute off junction 13, if that suits you?  

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It wasn't totally abandoned - there was a DF pattern done in early George V so they must have toyed with introducing them again.

If a florin was a tenth of a pound, and a DF was a fifth, then a crown was a quarter. Fits perfectly with a decimal system.