A 200-YEAR-OLD banknote issued when towns printed their own money is expected to sell for £150 at auction.

The black and white one guinea note, produced by the now-defunct Darlington Bank on September 1, 1814, is being sold by a private collector at Spink auctioneers in London on October 3.

It is a memento of the days when prominent merchants would issue promissory notes bearing their names as a guarantees from their own provincial banks.

The Darlington note features the names Mowbray, Hollingsworth, Wetherall, Shield, and Boultan and Co.

It is likely to be linked to Darlington's Hollingsworth's bank, owned by G Lewis Hollingsworth, which failed in 1814.

Barnaby Faull, banknotes expert at Spink, said the notes would have only had worth in the town where they were issued.

"It was no good going to another town, because the merchants would not be known there," he said.

"But in your own town, as long as the guys backing the bank had money, your money was safe.

"All the towns in the country used to make their own banknotes between 1790 and 1830 to 1840. At the time it was very difficult to get notes from the Bank of England and using coins was dangerous because of highwaymen."

He said: "These things turn up from time to time in the strangest places. A one guinea note would have been an average weekly wage."

A Bank of England spokesman said the guinea note - one pound and one shilling - was equivalent to about £35 in today's money.

In the year it was issued, King George III was on the throne and Napoleon abdicated.