This tiny silver coin tells us a great deal about the importance of Bristol. It was made at a mint in Bristol between 1017 and 1023 during the reign of King Cnut - the king famous for supposedly trying to stop the tide coming in.

The fact that Bristol had a mint, to turn foreign coin into legal coinage for trade and taxation, shows that the settlement was a significant trade and administrative centre.

Bristol was a trading hub from its beginning in about AD 1000. The settlement developed where it did at the lowest secure bridgable point of the River Avon. The position of its port, in a protected river but with easy access to the sea and to inland river transport, gave it advantages over other ports in the region. By about 1250, it was the second most important port in the country after London, trading locally, nationally and internationally, a position it held until the late 1700s.