5 Pounds

The Colonial Bank of Natal was a short-lived institution — it folded in 1866, just two years after this note was issued, absorbed into the broader consolidation of colonial banking that reshaped Natal's financial structure in the 1860s. The bank never achieved the foothold in Pietermaritzburg that its founders had intended.

Saul Solomon & Co. was a Cape Town printing and publishing house better known for its newspaper work than for banknote production. The choice reflects the limited specialist printing infrastructure available in southern Africa at the time — notes of this type were simply beyond what local facilities could produce with the security features a London firm would have offered.

Survivors are extremely rare; the bank's brief existence and small circulation area account for that.