New £50 note next month

The Bank of England has finally announced that the new-style £50 note will go into circulation on November 2nd. This will hopefully reinforce such efforts as are being made to 'rebalance' the economy towards manufacturing and returning the country to where its strength once lay.

The design of the new note was unveiled in Birmingham in May 2009 at the opening of the Matthew Boulton Bicentenary exhibition.
The £50 note features the industrialist Matthew Boulton (at left on the note) and the engineer James Watt, who pioneered the commercial use of efficient steam engines in manufacturing industry. It will be the first time that two portraits will appear together on the reverse of one its banknotes.

There are 210 million £50 notes currently in circulation to a total value of £10.5bn and the Bank has said that the note will have a range of enhanced security features. As ATM users will all too readily confirm, the most common Bank of England note is the £20, with 1.55 billion notes in circulation worth £31bn. While the BoE prints sufficient fivers, it is our friends in the commercial banks that do not like them.

The new Boulton and Watt note will initially be circulated concurrently with the existing £50 note featuring Sir John Houblon, the first governor of the Bank of England. The Houblon note will eventually be withdrawn at a date to be announced by the Bank in due course. The design was rarely changed since it was first introduced in 1725. In fact, a white £50 note was in use for more than 200 years until 1943.

For previous entries on the £50 note on this blog see May 2009 (Matthew Boulton Exhibition) and March 2011 (When will the new £50 note be issued?)