---
title: "Henry Portal"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Henry Portal"
aliases: ["Henri de Portal"]
first_seen: "2026-07-12T00:00:00.000Z"
connects_to: ["Bank of England banknote-paper supply contract (1724)","watermark (anti-counterfeiting)","Sutton Courtenay Mill (disputed predecessor claim)","British Association of Paper Historians"]
tags: ["currency","banknotes","watermarks","papermaking","bank-of-england"]
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
---


Huguenot-descended papermaker whose firm, based at Bere Mill / Laverstoke in Whitchurch, Hampshire, won the Bank of England's banknote-paper supply contract in 1724 — the earliest such arrangement documented in the Bank's own institutional history, and one the Bank's 1969 *Quarterly Bulletin* describes as "a connection which has lasted till the present day." He matters to this vault specifically as the anchor for the earliest *Tier-1-confirmed* named papermaker in the Bank's watermark lineage, in contrast to the Sutton Courtenay / Rice Watkins 1697 attribution, which remains uncorroborated at that tier.

## References

- [[claim-bank-of-england-adopted-watermarked-banknote-paper-1697]] — first vault mention (2026-07-12 cross-model audit), via British Association of Paper Historians Tier-2 corroboration
- [[claim-bank-of-england-1724-portal-contract-earliest-confirmed-not-1697-sutton-courtenay]] — Tier-1 corroboration of the 1724 contract directly from the Bank's own 1969 history, and the negative finding on Sutton Courtenay/Rice Watkins