Coins and Historical Medals from the Collection formed by the late Revd. Charles Campbell

Revd Charles Campbell

Charles Thomas Campbell (1902-83) was born in Grimsby and educated and employed locally before training for the ministry at Paton Congregational College in Tollerton, Nottinghamshire. While a student he frequently preached at the Scunthorpe Congregational Church where he was later ordained. He went on to serve as a minister in churches in Chesterfield, New Mills, Stockport and finally in Boston, Lincolnshire, where he retired. He married Kathleen Garrard in 1935 and they had one daughter Sylvia, three grandchildren and now seven great-grandsons.

Revd. Campbell first took an interest in numismatics in the late 1930s by studying the history of religion through the evidence of ancient coins. On such coins, symbols represent the dominant faith or the choice of the rulers. Surviving paperwork points to the fact that his collection was largely formed during the 1940s, with the London dealer Bert Seaby the principal source. For some years Revd. Campbell researched and catalogued coins for the Bible Lands Society in Holborn, London. He also made small donations to the Heberden Coin Room at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, of coins from the Eastern mints at the very beginning of the 5th century AD, which are often scarce in western collections.

Revd. Campbell’s numismatic interests extended beyond the ancient world and on retirement he became well known around Boston, giving talks to local societies about his collection. As a subscriber to Spink’s Numismatic Circular and Seaby’s Coin & Medal Bulletin, he kept up-to-date annotations of listings of similar pieces to those in his collection whenever they passed through the trade and his original envelopes with this information are sold with his coins and medals. He passed away in 1983 leaving this fascinating and broad-ranging collection to his grandchildren and the collection has been unavailable for study since that time.
Alison Winder/P.J.P-M.