Cragg Vale Coiners: The real life story of the 18th century Calder Valley gang behind one of the largest scams in English history

Their criminal exploits were punishable by death, but for a period in late 18th century Yorkshire, the powerful gang of counterfeiters held the community in the rural Calder Valley under their spell.

Enlisting the help of local people, the group clipped and filed huge numbers of gold coins of the realm, before returning them to circulation and melting down the extra metal collected to produce new counterfeit currency.

At their head, was 'King' David Hartley, whose direct descendant Steve Hartley has just published a book on the true story of the gang.

The tale of his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather is one that Steve has been researching for years.

“I always knew we descended from David Hartley, the leader of the Yorkshire coiners,” he said.

“Older generations didn’t discuss it so much probably because there was a bit of shame and embarrassment attached to it. But my grandad was certainly interested in it and as I got older, I talked to him quite a bit about it.”

Steve will be speaking about his book The Yorkshire Coiners: The True Story of the Cragg Vale Gang at Grayston Unity, Halifax, at 7pm on May 31.

It is thought Steve’s ancestor brought the coining trade back to West Yorkshire after fleeing Birmingham, where he had been an apprentice to an ironworker.

“Birmingham at that time had a little bit of coining going on but it was mainly copper and silver coins,” Steve said.

“There was a rumour that he’d come back to Yorkshire to escape arrest in Birmingham. When he got back, the woollen trade was suffering a little bit...Everybody was short of money and David saw an opportunity to make some.”

The coiners were highly organised, enlisting the help of many in the local community. They would clip and file the edges of gold coins and return the clipped coins to circulation. Then they used the gold collected from several coins to cast blanks and stamp new coins, usually Portuguese Moidores.

The Moidores, which were in circulation at the time, had geometric designs that were far easier to copy than the head and tail of the English Guinea – and had a greater face value. "Anyone who lent them a coin to get clipped, the coiners would give them a bit of money back,” Steve said. “So anyone helping the coiners made a bit of money as well, which is what led to their popularity.”

The threat posed by the gang was debated in Parliament and the Government had to do something to prevent the Exchequer being defrauded of millions of pounds and the nation’s currency being debased. It was forced to despatch high-ranking officials of the Royal Mint in an attempt to bring the gang to justice and the ringleaders to the gibbet.

David Hartley’s fate was death. He was executed by hanging in 1770, after being arrested the previous year.

"He was the one that the authorities ultimately knew was the leader,” Steve said.

“They wanted to arrest and prosecute him and in the end he was sentenced to death and I think they did that to set an example to the rest of the coiners - we’ve got your leader and if this can happen to your leader, imagine what can happen to the rest of you.

“Once David Hartley was arrested, the tide had turned,” he continues. “By that Christmas, there was probably 20 or 30 coiners in jail and a lot of the others fled or absconded because there were warrants out for their arrest as well.

"So I think once David Hartley had been arrested and measures were put in place to stop people using bad coins, the coiners basically said right we can’t carry on – there’s no point, we’re going to get arrested and we can’t use the coins we’re making.”

Steve’s book has been a labour of love.

It began back in 2009 when he attended a series of workshops for a planned film project on the coiners.

"[I knew there was] quite a bit of information published already about the story but jumbled up and not all of it true…I started out by taking extracts from books and putting them in chronological order to get the storyline right. And then, when I started looking into it, there was a lot more information in the archives that had never been looked at or published.”

Steve, a construction manager who now lives in Northamptonshire but was born in Leeds, was hooked.

Trips to archives in Yorkshire and London followed as he set about painstakingly finding, examining and transcribing documents to narrate the story of the Cragg Vale Coiners from start to finish. Yorkshire Coiners - The True Story of the Cragg Vale Gang is the result – though its publication has been a long-time coming.

Steve recalls how he was proof-reading his work from a hospital bed in 2012, having been diagnosed with Leukaemia, a type of blood cancer for which he underwent a stem cell transplant.

“I have approached publishers in the past and there’s been verify little interest,” he says. “They viewed it as being a very niche subject but I think [since] The Gallows Pole book came out the interest has grown a lot. People are looking for the real story behind [it].”

The fictional retelling of the coiners’ story by author Benjamin Myers was published in 2017 and is the base for a forthcoming BBC show of the same name.

The Gallows Pole will be This is England creator Shane Meadows’ first period television drama.

It will star Michael Socha (This Is England, Papillon), Thomas Turgoose (This Is England, Looted), George MacKay (1917, Captain Fantastic), Tom Burke (Mank, The Souvenir), Sophie McShera (Cinderella, Downton Abbey), Cara Theobold (Downton Abbey, Crazyhead), Yusra Warsama (Castle Rock) and Eve Burley (Secret State).

“I think [The Gallows Pole] will have dramatisation and artistic licence," added Steve, who runs the Yorkshirecoiners.com website.

"It’s made for TV at the end of the day but [great] if it brings the story to a wider audience – as even around Halifax and in parts of Yorkshire, there’s people who don’t know about the coiners.”

“My book is telling the real story of what will be televised really,” he adds. “A bit like Peaky Blinders, when people watch the TV series, they’re interested in the real story behind it. And I hope my book will be able to give people that detail.”

The event in Halifax where Steve will talk about the book has been organised in association with The Book Corner in The Piece Hall. Tickets are £4 and available from the See Tickets website.

The Yorkshire Coiners: The True Story of the Cragg Vale Gang by Steve Hartley is published by Amberley and is out now.