Pre-1971, yes. I'm not sure if there were any official divisions beyond £1 (pound) = 20s (shilling) = 240d (penny, pl. pence), but you would also hear some things quoted in 'guineas', which were 21s, and farther back there were "crowns" at 5s, "marks" at 13s 4d, "florins" at 2s, "groats" at 4d, and "farthings" at 1/4d.
The
£sd system (
£=Pound,
s=Shilling,
d=Penny - written:
£ LL ss
/dd) is the official base divisional-denomination system for pre-1971 England (and really for all of Europe going back to Charlemagne, with some language-based name changes).
In Great Britain:
£ 4 3/6 = " 4 Pound 3 and 6" -OR- " 4 Pound 3 and Sixpence" = 4 pounds, 3 shillings, and 6 pence;
£ 4 3/- = " 4 Pound 3 " = 4 pounds, 3 shillings;
3/6 = "3 and 6" -OR- " 3 and Sixpence" = 3 shillings, and 6 pence;
-/6 = 6 pence;
Note that the slash "/" was originally the "long-s" ( "∫" ) for solidus or shilling.
All coins were rated relative to these base values, and in some pre-modern periods, there were not even coins for some of the larger denominations, as they were merely monies of account. Charlemagne devised the following base denominational value scheme, which influenced Europe for Centuries:
Obol (=½ d)
Denarius (Denier/Penny) (=1d)
Solidus (Sou/Shilling) (=1s =12d = £ 1/20)
Mark (= £½ = 10s =120d originally; - due to penny-debasement, rose to = £2/3 =160d) *
Libra (Pound) (= £1 = 20s =240d)
* - The original "Pound" of Charlemagne was 8oz., but he later greatly increased its value as he modified and standardized his system. Pounds of Silver that were certified to the Imperial Standard were "Marked". As later silver supplies dwindled after Charlemagne, the actual pennyweight-value of silver in denarii was debased which caused the value of the Mark to rise relative to the "Pound of Silver Pennies". - I am going to guess that this is also where the 12oz to the Troy Pound vs. 16 oz to the Avoirdupois Pound distinction arose.
The system above was a simplification and standardization of the various systems that had arisen (and still had coins in circulation from) Republican (Bronze Coinage), Late Republic/ Imperial (Bronze/Silver Coinage), and Late Imperial Rome (Gold Coinage), all of which had different denominational systems, and no longer had a backing government. Originally, the Roman Pound (a value known as a "
Sestertium") was originally divided into 1000 Bronze
Sesterces, each of which was valued at ¼d, where 1d = 1
Silver Denarius. (There were also lots of other Roman Gold and Silver Coins in circulation of varying weights and denominations that complicated things).
The
Penny was originally a
pennyweight of silver (a little smaller than a dime) and in England was "quartered" into "fourths" so that it could be broken into four bits or "
farthings", if needed for smaller values. A pennyweight was 1/240
th of a
Pound. In later times there were also the minted
Tuppence (two-pence),
Thruppence (three-pence), and
Sixpence (six-pence) coins.
In the 13th Century the first Silver Farthing coins were minted, and in the 16th-17th Century they were minted in Copper/Bronze or Tin. Also during the 16th-17th Century, and again in the late 19th-early 20th Century, bronze ¼ farthings, 1/3 farthings, and ½ farthings were also issued for circulation in colonial territories.
The English "
Great Penny", or "
Groat" was a slightly larger minted silver coin (=4d) to make it easier to carry and pay larger values (as the small pennies were easy to lose). King Henry III attempted to introduce a "
Gold Penny" (i.e. a pennyweight of gold, presumably ≈ 20d), but it failed to catch on.
The
Shilling was not a minted coin until the Renaissance, but rather a value of account. It was later a minted silver coin of 1s = 12d.
The
Florin was in origin a Florentine gold coin (
Florino d'Oro that became very popular across Europe and was copied by other countries, including England, the Netherlands, and Germany (the
Guilder, and
Gulden), but was a high value coin of fluctuating value). The
Florin that is typically referred to when people think of the English coin is the Victorian minted coin valued at 2s and was an early attempt at decimalization (£ 1/10).
The
Crown and
Half-Crown were coins first minted in the mid-16th Century and valued at 5s and 2½s. They are called a "
Dollar" or "
Half-Dollar" in slang, as historically the
Spanish Dollar was of approximately the same value (and thus the
American Dollar was originally valued at £1 = $4).
The Scots used the
Mark until about the early 17th Century, and as the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England brought them into closer relationship over the 17th Century, the
Scots Pound slowly became devalued relative to the
English Pound by about 12:1, so that in the end £
Scots1 ≈ 1½s, and 1s
Scots ≈ 1d. Thus, the older Scots Gaelic word for penny was
peighinn, but the modern Scots Gaelic word for "penny" is
sgillinn from "shilling".
The
Sovereign coin (first minted in 1489, but thereafter only minted intermittently until the 19th Century) had a value of £1 (=20s). There was also a
Half-Sovereign coin, and a
Double Sovereign.
The
Guinea coin had its genesis in the 17th century with acquisition of a gold source in Guniea (West Africa), which had no face-value, and whose monetary value originally varied based on the rate at which gold was valued at the time based upon supply. It was notionally about £1 (=20s) but tended to vary from anywhere between 18s - 30s depending on the amount of gold currently in circulation. By the mid-18th Century its value had become fixed as a coin at 21s.
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