The British Pound is the world’s oldest currency still in use at 1,200 years of age.
Dating back to Anglo-Saxon times, the pound has gone through many changes before evolving into the currency recognized all over the world today.
The first pound coin did not appear until 1489, under Henry VII. Then it was known as a sovereign. 
The shilling was first minted in 1504 while gold coins emerged in 1560, and by 1672 some were made of copper.
The minting of the earliest Sterling silver pennies has been attributed to Anglo-Saxon King Offa of Mercia who introduced the system of money to central and southern England in the latter half of the 8th Century.
The oldest form of the pound varied considerably in weight and 240 of them seldom added up to today’s one pound.
The first fully printed banknotes were introduced in 1853. Before that, following its establishment in 1694, the Bank of England only issued partially printed notes with the ‘£’ sign as well as the first digit. The numbers had to be added by hand and each note had to be signed by one of the bank’s cashiers. Today’s banknotes developed out of these original handwritten notes.
The pound is currently the fourth most traded currency in the foreign exchange market, after the US dollar, the euro and the Japanese yen.
The British Pound is not only used in the United Kingdom, it is also used in other countries of the world .
In Nigeria, it was a legal tender between 1907 and 1973 when the country was a colony of the British Empire.
The British West African Pound was the currency used by then West African Territories including Nigeria, the Gold Coast (now Ghana), Sierra Leone and the Gambia.
It was however abolished in Nigeria in 1958 when Nigeria adopted its currency.
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