Kings Norton Mint was a 19th-century

metalworking Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on every scale ...

and minting company founded in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. As a private company it worked to develop and manufacture various metal products including wire, nails, ammunitions and later coins on behalf of the

Royal Mint The Royal Mint is the United Kingdom's oldest company and the official maker of British coins. Operating under the legal name The Royal Mint Limited, it is a limited company that is wholly owned by His Majesty's Treasury and is under an exclu ...

. Notably it is credited with inventing solid-drawn ammunition cartridges for small firearms.

History

The Kings Norton Mint was founded in 1889 as ''The King's Norton Metal Company'' by engineers Thomas Richard Bayliss and George Hagger. Initially the company specialised in the manufacture of coinage strip and coin blanks however also produces products for the construction industry. Prior to the mint's creation the nearby Birmingham Mint under the ownership of Ralph Heaton III had dominated the industry little competition in competing for minting contract. By 1912 the company acquired a contract from the

to supply bronze

Planchet A planchet is a round metal disk that is ready to be struck as a coin. An older word for planchet is flan. They are also referred to as blanks. History The preparation of the flan or planchet has varied over the years. In ancient times, the f ...

for its London based facility and later started to supply coinage for the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading post ...

. Working in conjunction with the

and the Birmingham Mint the Kings Norton Mint eventually struck its own coin series marked with a K N mint mark. With the outbreak of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

priorities shifted towards the war effort and instead focused on ammunitions and weaponry. In 1926 the Mint was amalgamated into

Imperial Chemical Industries Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was a British chemical company. It was, for much of its history, the largest manufacturer in Britain. It was formed by the merger of four leading British chemical companies in 1926. Its headquarters were at M ...

References

{{Reflist, 2 Mints of the United Kingdom British companies established in 1889