What does an anchor mark on silver mean?

An anchor is the assay office mark of Birmingham, which has tested silver since 1773. It says where the piece was assayed, not where it was made or by whom, and its real job is to tell you to open Birmingham's date letter table rather than another office's. An anchor lying on its side, rather than upright, indicates gold rather than silver.

What does a crown mark on silver mean?

On British silver a crown was the assay office mark of Sheffield, used until 1975, when Sheffield adopted a rose instead. So a crown beside a lion passant and a date letter points to Sheffield and to a date before 1975. Crowns also appear inside other marks and on Continental silver, so read it in the context of the whole row rather than on its own.

Which UK assay offices are still open?

Four: London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Edinburgh. Several others operated historically and have closed, including Chester, Exeter, Newcastle, York and Glasgow, which closed in 1964. A mark from a closed office is a useful date bracket in itself, because the piece cannot be later than the closure.

Does the assay office mark tell you where a piece was made?

No, and this trips people up constantly. It says where the metal was tested. A Sheffield firm could and often did send work to London for assay, so a London leopard's head on a piece made in Sheffield is entirely normal and not a sign of anything wrong.

Why does my silver have an oval office mark and a number instead of a lion?

That is an import mark. Silver assayed in Britain for import after 1904 carries the office mark in an oval surround and the standard as a decimal figure such as .925, rather than the lion passant. The set reads differently from a domestic one by design, and mistaking it for a fake is a common error.

Assay office marks — leopard, anchor, crown, rose

Q: What does a leopard's head mean on silver?

A leopard's head is the assay office mark of London, and it is one of the oldest marks in the system. It wore a crown until the early 1820s and has been bare-headed since, which splits London silver into two large eras at a glance and is often the quickest thing to notice on a piece.

The assay office mark answers one question — which office tested this? — and answering it is what makes the rest of the hallmark readable. Every office kept its own date letter cycle until 1975, so the office mark is the key to the table, and the table is the key to the year.

It says nothing about where the object was made. A Sheffield firm could send work to London for assay, and often did.

The four British assay office marks in use today

Town	Mark	Since
London	A leopard’s head	The earliest days of the system
Birmingham	An anchor	1773
Sheffield	A rose — and a crown before 1975	1773
Edinburgh	A castle	1457

Four marks, four towns, and between them almost everything you will meet on British silver.

Birmingham and Sheffield were both established in 1773, after a campaign led by the Birmingham manufacturer Matthew Boulton, who was tired of sending plate to Chester and losing weeks to the journey. The story that the two towns settled their marks — an anchor and a crown — over a drink at the Crown and Anchor tavern in London is told by the offices themselves, and is at least a good story.

Sheffield’s crown became a rose in 1975, and that single change is a useful bracket in both directions: a genuine Sheffield crown means before 1975, and a rose means after.

The Birmingham anchor lies on its side for gold and stands upright for silver. It is a small detail that answers a question people often have about a mark that looks familiar but wrong.

The London leopard’s head, and the crown it lost

London’s leopard’s head goes back to the earliest days of the system, and it changed once in a way that is immediately visible.

It wore a crown until the early 1820s and has been bare-headed since. That splits London silver into two large eras at a glance, and it is usually the first thing to notice on a London piece, before you have found the date letter at all.

The exact year is disputed. The London Assay Office’s own history says 1822; a great many published tables say 1821. We give the range rather than picking, for the reason set out in what the lion passant means: a confident year repeated across enough pages starts to look like a fact, and this one has been repeated both ways.

In the same reorganisation the lion passant stopped facing out at the viewer and was struck in profile. The two changes travel together, which is useful — if you find one you should find the other, and a piece with an uncrowned leopard beside a lion looking straight at you deserves a second look.

Assay office marks that closed

A mark from an office that no longer exists is a gift, because closure gives you a hard latest date that needs no table at all.

Chester — closed 1962. Its mark was a shield with three wheatsheaves and a sword.
Glasgow — closed 1964. A tree, a fish and a bell, from the city’s arms.
Exeter, Newcastle and York — all long closed.

If your piece carries one of these, two things follow. It cannot be later than the closure, and the office’s own tables are the only ones that will read its date letter — which in practice means a reference book or a library rather than a quick search, because the online tables mostly cover the four offices that are still trading.

This is also where the trade’s rule about provincial silver comes from: pieces from the closed offices are scarcer simply because those offices assayed less, for fewer years, and a Chester or an Exeter mark is often worth pausing over for that reason alone.

Import marks read differently, and that is not a fake

Silver assayed in Britain for import after 1904 carries the office mark in an oval surround, with the standard given as a decimal figure — .925 rather than a lion.

If your set looks like a hallmark but the shapes are all wrong, check whether you are holding an import mark before concluding it is a forgery. The oval is deliberate: the system needed to distinguish foreign-made silver tested in Britain from British-made silver tested in Britain, and it did so by changing the shape of the surround rather than the symbol inside it.

Each office also received its own import symbol, so a London import mark and a Birmingham import mark differ — and neither is the leopard or the anchor you would see on a domestic piece.

Foreign marks are a different system entirely

A great deal of what arrives labelled “silver” is Continental, and Continental marking is not one system but many. Some countries mark by millesimal number, some by a national symbol, some by both, and some hardly at all.

A British table will not read them. Matching a foreign mark to a British one because the shapes are similar is how objects get badly misattributed — and it happens most often with lions, crowns and heads, which appear in a dozen systems meaning a dozen different things.

The honest position on an unfamiliar mark is that it is unidentified until it is identified. That is not a satisfying answer, and it is a great deal better than a wrong one.

What to do once you have the office

You have the key. Open that office’s table — and only that office’s — and match the date letter on three things at once: the letter, the typeface, and the shape of the shield around it.

Silver date letters explains why all three matter and what goes wrong when only the letter is checked.