Medal, commemorative medal

This medal commemorates the passing into law of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland on the 1st January 1801. The medal was designed by Conrad Heinrich Küchler, a Flanders-born medallist who moved to England from Germany in around 1790. He was employed at Matthew Boulton's Soho Mint in Birmingham where he engraved dies for a number of patriotic medals during the period of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

On the obverse of this medal, King George III is shown in profile. On the reverse, the figures of Britannia and Hibernia are depicted shaking hands beneath a Latin inscription meaning, 'Their resources are united, the kingdom is strengthened'. The ships in the background symbolise the economic relationship between the two nations. The Act of Union followed the rebellion of the United Irishmen in 1798, which was supported by the French Republic. The rebellion convinced the British Prime Minister William Pitt of the necessity of bringing Ireland under tighter control through a political union.