The Mint Museum although founded only in 1816, now fully reflects the three principal locations of the Mint in its 1100-year history: the Tower of London, Tower Hill and Llantrisant. The Tower of London has been a royal palace, a gaol, a fortress and even a zoo, and for over 500 years of its history, from the end of the thirteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was home to the Royal Mint. Never occupying any of the glamorous parts of the Tower, the Mint was rather spread out around the perimeter between the inner and the outer walls.
Lack of space in the Tower during the Napoleonic Wars forced the Mint to find new premises, and during the first few years of the nineteenth century a purpose-built mint was erected across the road at Tower Hill. Behind the imposing Georgian fa�ze were the factory workshops of a thoroughly modernised mint, equipped with the latest in industrial steam-powered coining presses installed by Matthew Boulton.
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The pressure of work in preparing for decimalisation in the 1960s meant that lack of space again forced the Mint to look for new accommodation. A site in South Wales fifteen miles north west of Cardiff was eventually chosen, and the Mint has now been there for over thirty years.
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