No Bathroom Wall out-lets or A/C!!??

[BIAD]

Yessir, we do use pounds - or at least we used to, and it has carried over in some idioms such as "in for a penny, in for a pound" meaning pretty much "whatever you do, do it all the way, do it like you mean it". That may be just around here, rather than nationwide, however. We tend to hold on to things longer here in the hinterlands. 

Yep, we use 'In for a penny...' over here too.

Pennies, dimes, quarters, and dollars didn't really take off as a medium of exchange here until around 1790, and they were patterned after the Spanish dollar - that's why a quarter (quarter dollar) used to be referred to as "two bits". Spanish dollars were often subdivided into eighths -A.K.A. "pieces of eight" or "bits" - and two of those "bits" equaled out to a quarter of a Spanish dollar.

We did have "Continental dollars" here earlier, but they were practically worthless, hence the phrase "not worth a Continental". Most road houses and the like still listed all their prices in pounds, shillings, and pence, and Continental dollars were rarely ever used in reality because of their debased value. Sort of like Confederate dollars a hundred years later. Wright's Tavern in Wentworth, NC (Rockingham County), was still listing their prices in pounds, shillings, and pence into the early 1800's.

Now that is interesting, the phrase "not worth a Continental" always threw me, in my head a 'Continental' is an American car... why would
it be worthless? Now I know, thanks. The Spanish reference may go to explain the old pirate mention of 'pieces of eight' too.

As I recall, and I may be recalling wrong - so feel free to correct me here - there were 12 pence to the shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound.

 
I checked with my equivalent to the Bank of England A.K.A -my wife, and you're bang-on the money as they say! Correct.

@"F2d5thCav" 
The word dēnārius is derived from the Latin dēnī "containing ten", as its value was originally of 10 assēs
so that still leaves the question as to why a coin associated with 10 of something came to be the source of an abbreviation
for a coin associated with 12.

I'm still looking-up stuff, but I think the 'denarius' became the name purely due to the Romans effecting the British Isles' culture.
The actual became a meme -if you will, denarius meant penny in the same way Champagne means a drink of bubbly-wine, not the
district of France the grapes are grown in. (A bit lame, I agree!)

Remember, those in power in Britain spoke Latin, French and German. Names based on a 'foreign' source may not always hold the
same quality as from where the word originated.