One of the BRD finds (Buck House I think) was a 17thC Tradesman's Token. These were mainly current between 1649 and 1672 when small change was very scarce and when issuing such tokens was not suppressed. The Restoration government finally got round to getting a shipment of copper from Sweden in 1672 and issuing new farthings and ha'pennies whereupon the tokens passed out of circulation.
A extensive index of some 1300+ of these by J H Burns was published in 1855 titled, "London Traders, Tavern and Coffee-House Tokens Current in the Seventeenth Century". A facsimile of this is available on CDrom as it acts as the nearest thing to a 'trade directory' for the period. I'll transcribe the entry but it adds little to what we already know. This is as printed since the jargon and layout may be understood by a numismatist which I'm not:
"1123 CHARLES STVRTON AT - In the field, C.S. Rev. THE SWAN IN THE STRAND - A swan, in the field. see note on No. 303."
I'll limit comment on the long entry on 303, to say that this is *The Swan 'against the mewes'* at Charing Cross and, with a bunch of grapes in its beak, appears to be different from the other Swan. Certainly one of the two, #303 according to Burns, had famous customers; from the Duke of Norfolk before slain at the Battle of Bosworth 200yrs earlier through Ben Jonson to Pepys himself!
The book includes an essay some 80pp long on the history of the coinage from earliest times leading up to the background of these Trademen's Token and then another dozen pages on Pub/Shop/Traders' signs as the sources for the images on the tokens.
The matter of small change was subject to debate and various proposals for a whole century prior to the 1649-72 period as commerce began to take off in Elizabethan times; some rare lead tokens survive from pre-1649.
Collections by Hans Sloane and the sister of Joseph Banks form the base of the National Collection at the British Museum. The Guildhall Library in The City may also still have a collection unless this has also been combined with the BM since 1850.
For more on the CD, just doing a search on 'archiveCDbooks' or 'rod + neep' should get you there. I daren't try the full url as a harmless posting about King John 'Lackland' disappeared into moderation on Monday never to emerge perhaps because of a bad link.
The BRD failed to find any evidence of the Civil War defensive works on the edge of the Buck House (Goring House) Estate. The reasons were a bit muddied but it seems part was lack of access to areas they would liked to have examined and a lot of landscape modification in others because of levelling up with imported material.
In case anyone thought the trade token might have helped the theory of the Parliamentary garrison there is a slight snag if these tokens dated from 1649 when the war was long over and the Republic founded. Bit of a pity in a way.
There is converse hypothesis of course too: that some small garrison was maintained there beyond 1649 though I doubt Goring would have liked the sound of that!! More likely it was dropped by his butler or steward's staff working in the house and estate.
I just found this amusing snippet: On July 10, 1660, Pepys records he went to the Swan Tavern (which one?) and thence to Goring House for a wedding party. So perhaps Pepys lost it!
