Hallmark Decoder
A short row of tiny marks can tell you where a piece of British silver was tested, how pure it is and, very often, the year it was made. Tell us which marks you can see, in any order, and we’ll narrow it down. Start with whichever is clearest: every mark you add tightens the dates.
The decoder knows the London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Chester and Glasgow assay offices.
Tell us which marks you can see, starting with any one.
How hallmarks work
A traditional British hallmark is a short row of punched marks, and each one answers a single question.
- Town mark: which assay office tested the piece. A leopard’s head for London, an anchor for Birmingham, a crown (a rose since 1975) for Sheffield and a castle for Edinburgh.
- Standard mark: how pure the silver is. In England the lion passant means sterling, 92.5% silver; Scotland used the thistle, and later the lion rampant. Since 1999 the purity has also been stamped as a number, such as 925.
- Date letter: the year the piece was assayed. Each office worked through the alphabet one letter a year, changing the style of the letters with each new cycle. The same letter comes round again every few decades, so the other marks are what tell the cycles apart.
- Duty mark: between 1784 and 1890, a small profile of the monarch showed that tax had been paid on the piece.
- Maker’s mark: the initials of the maker or sponsor. There are tens of thousands of them, so this decoder leaves them out.
For the story of how the system grew, read A Short History of Silver Assaying and Hallmarks.
The date-letter tables here are transcribed from published sources and have not yet all been checked against a printed reference, so results from those tables are marked as unverified. For a valuable piece, it’s always worth asking a specialist.