ABSTRACT
Within their locality, mints were no doubt situated with a view to security, amenity and facility. The dies for coinage, as well as the bullion, were precious, and the mint rooms or building had to be secure. This particularly applied in the case of the towns of Lothian and the Borders, which were open to attacks from the English; it is not surprising that a castle was often chosen to house the mint. On the other hand, the noise and heat of a minting workshop would have been highly disagreeable to the inhabitants of a castle if too close at hand, and it would usually be set apart from the living quarters, as at Stirling. Mints established for decentralised recoinage or commercial reasons would need to be conveniently situated for market or port. Always there had to be room for the plant and equipment involved in minting - furnaces, anvils, workbenches for cutting and weighing, storage for silver and dies - which was similar to that available to a jeweller, although on a larger scale, as well as provision for the administrative side of coinage - exchange, assay and record. 3 The establishment of a mint therefore involved preparation and outlay, although on occasions it could apparently be improvised with speed as at the siege of Roxburgh; it was convenient if a previously existing mint could be revived, as no doubt happened in c. 1280 with some of the mints that had operated in the recoinage of 1250, and when mints such as Carlisle and Berwick changed hands their captors were not slow to convert to their own use the minting facilities
Little is known of the exact situation or physical nature of Scottish mints in the middle ages. There is no evidence that they ever existed as public buildings in their own right, such as the fourteenth-century hOtel de la monnaie which can still be seen at Figeac in Aquitaine where the Black Prince had a mint. 4 Of those within castle walls, that at Stirling was in the gatehouse at the northeast entrance, before the Great Hall. 5 Sometimes a mint was operated in a private house. Even the Edinburgh mint seems to have been so placed at certain periods, as the mint accounts explain. Five pounds were paid in 1358 for a year's rent of a private house 'pro monetario'; perhaps the regular mint had not yet been refitted for use after long abeyance, since the same account records that £9 lOs. was spent 'pro tectura et reparacione domorum monetariorum de mandata Regis'. 6 There are also several references to houses containing the mint under James II. One apparently belonged to the king - £3 l3s. 4d. was paid 'pro annuo redditu hospitii domini Regis prope portam de Kirkstile • •• in quo hospitio dicta moneta fabricatur'. 1 Others belonged to private individuals: in 1441 one John Swift was paid £2 l3s. 4d., 'pro firma domus dicte cone',8 and the same phrase is used of 6s. 8d. paid to Robert Hakate in 1443, in relation to coinage at Stirling.9 As late as 1581 coinage had to be carried out in a private house because the mint was in disrepair.
