MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

The Houblon £50 notes 20-year cycle ends next Wednesday says BoE

Some banks and the Post Office will exchange the Houblon until 30 October

The £50 note featuring the first governor of the Bank of England, Sir John Houblon, will be withdrawn on Wednesday after 20 years in circulation. From that time, only the £50 banknote featuring Matthew Boulton and James Watt, which was introduced in 2011, will hold legal tender status.

 The Bank of England withdraws notes every now and then so it can replace them with new notes that are harder to forge. It reckons that with two weeks to go there were still 53 million of them in circulation, with a value of £2.65bn.

“We'd expect a lot to be out there,” says Victoria Cleland, head of the notes division at the Bank of England (remember her name - you'll start seeing it on banknotes soon).

“There was an increase in demand for fifties during the financial crisis,” she adds, as people worried about the safety of banks.

She also says that some people use larger denomination notes to save up for something, and those people might well keep their Houblon £50 notes until they are ready to make a purchase and only then come to the Bank of England to convert them to current notes.

We know that high-denomination banknotes are popular with criminals because they make it easier to transport lots of cash, although the most valuable Euro note - the 500 Euro - is worth eight times as much as a £50 note.

After April 30 general retailers are unlikely to accept the Houblon notes as payment. However, most banks and building societies will continue to accept them for deposit to customer accounts. Agreeing to exchange notes after 30 April is at the discretion of individual institutions.

Barclays, NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank and the Post Office have all agreed to exchange Houblon £50 notes for members of the public - up to the value of £200 - until 30 October 2014.

The Bank of England will continue to exchange Houblon £50 notes after 30 April, as it would for any other Bank of England note which no longer has legal tender status.