5 Pounds

The Southern Rhodesia Currency Board was a passive issuing authority — it held sterling backing for every note in circulation and had no independent monetary policy to speak of. The £5 was the highest denomination in the series and would have moved primarily through commercial banking channels rather than everyday trade, given the purchasing power involved in mid-1950s Rhodesia.

Bradbury, Wilkinson's New Malden plant was the dominant supplier for British colonial currency in this period, and the engraved intaglio printing they applied to notes of this value gave the series a quality finish that distinguished it from lower-denomination issues. The federation of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland had only been established in 1953, and this Currency Board note predates the eventual transition to the Bank of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which absorbed issuing responsibility before the decade was out.