The new £10 note hits the streets and our pockets this week and will be the first banknote made in Cumbria.

The Innovia factory in Wigton produces the polymer substrate material which is then printed on by a company in Essex.

The new £10 note features a picture of the author Jane Austen, marking 200 years since her death in 1817.

The design will include Winchester Cathedral where Austen is buried along with the quote “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!”


Staff at work at Innovia in Wigton, which has opened a brand new facility to manufacture substrate for the Bank of England's new £10 note Also featured is an image of Godmersham Park House, the estate owned by Jane Austen’s brother, Edward.

The note will also be 15 per cent smaller than the £10 paper equivalent but larger than the new £5 which has been in circulation for more than a year now.

For the first time, a note will include features to help the visually impaired, with raised dots. similar to braille characters, on the left hand side of the note and raised lines on the right.

Some 275 million notes are ready to be released on Thursday, with 800 million of them scheduled to be issued.

Most bank branches are expected to have the notes within a week so.

As with the new £5 notes,there is expected to be a surge of interest in claiming the first ones printed with a low serial number.

As with the fivers, numbers that begin AA, AB, AC or AK are expected to become worth much more than their face value.
The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, during the unveiling at Winchester Cathedral, of the new £10 note

Despite complaints from vegetarians and some religious groups, the new note will still contain traces of animal fat thought the Bank of England is reportedly looking into ways to make its notes tallow-free.

The old paper £10 will go out of circulation in spring 2018, with banks and businesses gradually removing old notes before that date.

The new £20 note featuring English romanticist artist JMW Turner is due to be launched in 2020.

A self-portrait of artist JMW Turner, painted in around 1799, along with the quote "Light is therefore colour" from an 1818 lecture by Turner, will feature on the new note.