25 Pounds

The Durban Bank was a short-lived colonial institution, established in Natal in the early 1860s during a period of speculative banking expansion in the province. It did not survive long enough to leave a substantial note-issuing history, which makes any surviving example from this series genuinely rare.

Nissen & Parker operated as a relatively minor London printing house — not one of the dominant security printers of the period — and their work on colonial bank paper is infrequently documented. The high face value suggests this note was intended for merchant and interbank settlement rather than retail circulation, sharply limiting the number ever put into daily use.