The Fitzwilliam Museum has several tokens for local tradesmen relating to food. This one, inscribed ‘John Marston in Trumpington Street, Cambridge’, has a hand pouring coffee from a pot into four cups set on a table. The exact location of Marston’s coffee shop is unknown, but it was likely to have been a favourite haunt of students, serving food and alcohol as well as coffee. Isaac Newton may well have frequented it in the early 1660s, when a student at Trinity.

Issued by John Marston, Cambridge, England, 1648 –72

Copper alloy

Acquired in 1908 (CM.BI.317-R)