Posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2014
Written by Ralph J. Benko
When Her Majesty’s government moved the British Royal Mint in the early 19th century, it was to a building called … the New Royal Mint. It is by a long yellow brick wall, “in true Wizard of Oz fashion.”
According to Medieval Bex:
[K]eep walking south, following the road as it curves left and then right, passing beneath railway arches and Royal Mint Street on your left, and you’ll see not only the Tower of London ahead, but also a huge walled compound on your left that seems highly incongruous with the sights of the street you’ve just travelled along.
New Royal Mint
Follow this long yellow brick wall (in true Wizard of Oz fashion!) and you arrive at a rather grand and stately building. This is (or was) the New Royal Mint. In the early nineteenth century the decision was made to remove the mint from the Tower of London following the outbreak of war with France and the resulting demands on the Tower’s space. Building work began on Little Tower Hill in 1805, and was completed in 1809. The buildings housed the new steam-powered minting machinery and residences for officers and staff, and were surrounded by a boundary (the yellow brick wall) shadowed by a narrow alleyway that officers could patrol. The mint outgrew these buildings and was moved to Wales following decimalisation, and this structure is now used as commercial offices by Barclays.
Presumably the same Barclays that, according to Reuters, just was
fined 26 million pounds ($43.8 million) for failures in internal controls that allowed a trader to manipulate the setting of gold prices, just a day after the bank was fined for rigging Libor interest rates in 2012.
Britain’s Barclays is the first bank to be fined over attempted manipulation of the 95-year-old London gold market daily “fix”, although a source familiar with the fine said it was a one-off and not part of a wider investigation into gold price rigging.
The lure and lore of gold continue to intermix in a rich tapestry of past and present, fantasy and reality.
We ignore the man behind the curtain at our peril.
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