Being unable to sleep, I thought I'd catch up on some of my massive backlog of unwatched documentaries. I started with the first episode of Ch4's Walking Through History, where Time Team's Tony Robinson strolls through England's Derwent Valley.
Half way in, he holds up this 8-reales coin, which he mis-identifies as a Spanish Dubloon:
(http://goo.gl/km6iU)
I found it fascinating, and wanted to know more. So, as usual, Google to the rescue...
There was a thread in the CoinTalk Forum (http://www.cointalk.com/forum.php) about one of these, since deleted, but cached here:
http://goo.gl/a8mZW
And over at the official Cromford website http://cromfordvillage.co.uk/arkwrights.html is this image of an 1802 example, minted ten years after Arkwright's death:
(http://cromfordvillage.co.uk/Arkcoin.jpg)
Fascinating stuff, especially the controversy over Arkwright's patents, and the greater accomplishments of his son.