Thomas Bigg’s Chipperfield Connections

Those of you who have looked at the new village map will have noticed a picture of two sides of a coin in the bottom right hand corner. On the obverse side of the coin is the name THOMAS BIGG 1669, arranged around a representation of the coat of arms of a weavers’ company and on the reverse side are the words – OF CHIPPERFIELD HIS HALF PENNY T.M.B.
Newspaper and magazine articles that I collected way back in 1986 and 1989, tell us that Thomas Bigg had some connection with a weavers’ company in the City of London and that the M stood for his wife’s initial.
This halfpenny coin or trading token is an extremely rare example. It was issued in the 17th century, when there was a shortage of small change, thus making it difficult for people to do their trading and shopping. The Government found it too costly to mint copper coins, so the traders took the matter into their own hands and issued their own private token coins. Only twenty-three traders’ tokens are known to relate to Dacorum. Dacorum Heritage Trust, with the support of the Friends of Dacorum Museum, has been able to buy several local tokens over the years, but being valuable they have to be stored in a bank deposit box.
Researchers from Kings Langley History Society discovered, from the Court Rolls and Parish Registers, that Thomas Bigg was a prosperous silk weaver who worked in Chipperfield and kept a general store. When he died in 1672, he left goods worth more than £38, which was a considerable amount of money in those days. The letter M in the initials on the token stood for Martha, his second wife, who died in 1676.
Thomas Bigg lived in an eight-roomed house in Chipperfield and had a large family. Which of the 17th century houses could it have been?
I was prompted to remind you about the existence of this token because the name Bigg came up when I recently went on a day course at Nicholls Farm in Redbourn. We were looking at documents relating to this very old building and I discovered that the same Thomas Bigg used to own that farm as well as property in Chipperfield. There used to be a silk mill in Redbourn, so Thomas’ link with the weavers’ trade may well have been centred there.
Mary Nobbs