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A Fine And Rare 100-Bore Flintlock Seven-Barrelled Goose Rifle image 1
A Fine And Rare 100-Bore Flintlock Seven-Barrelled Goose Rifle image 2
Lot 233*

A Fine And Rare 100-Bore Flintlock Seven-Barrelled Goose Rifle
By Henry Nock, London, Gun Maker To His Majesty, Late 18th Century

11 May 2016, 13:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £22,500 inc. premium

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A Fine And Rare 100-Bore Flintlock Seven-Barrelled Goose Rifle
By Henry Nock, London, Gun Maker To His Majesty, Late 18th Century

With browned twist barrels each rifled with seven grooves, with silver fore-sight and signed in full along the rib, case-hardened breech with gold line and gold-lined touch-hole, border engraved tang deeply engraved with foliage and fitted with folding leaf back-sight retaining traces of original blueing, case-hardened detented flat lock with stepped tail and bevelled edge, gold-lined maker's oval, rainproof pan, blued safety-catch and blued steel-spring with roller, figured half-stock (some old bruising) with chequered grip, border engraved steel mounts comprising butt-plate decorated with a prone gundog and gamebird, the former against foliage, trigger-guard retaining some original blueing and with a gamebird amid foliage on the bow, trigger-plate with elaborate urn-shaped finial, a pineapple emerging from the top, foliate engraved rear ramrod-pipe with pineapple finial, silver barrel-bolt escutcheons, original brass-mounted ramrod, and some original finish, London proof marks
60.9 cm. barrels

Footnotes

Seven-barrel sporting rifles, for birds as well as roe deer, were made popular by Colonel Thomas Thornton's A Sporting Tour through the Northern Parts of England (1804) and A Sporting Tour through France (1805). Thornton himself was so enthusiastic about them that he commissioned a fourteen-barrelled example, now in the Musée d'Armes in Liège (inv. no. Ael/5866)

For further information on rifles of this type see W. Keith Neal and D.H.L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1740-1790, 1989, pp. 109-110

Henry Nock took livery in 1795, was elected Master of the Gunmakers' Company in 1802 and was appointed Gunsmith-in-Ordinary to King George III in 1789. He is famous as the principle maker of seven-barrelled volley guns and rifles. He produced a total of 655 guns for naval service, and a silver-mounted sporting rifle for the Prince of Wales, today in the collection of H.M. the Queen at Windsor Castle (inv. no. L 154). He died in 1804

For another example by the same maker (no. 2949 for 1797) and formerly in the W. Keith Neal Collection see Christie's London, 9 November 2000, lot 101 (£18,000 including premium)

Additional information

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