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A Very Rare Cased .400 (70-Bore) Percussion Seven-Barrelled Goose RifleBy H. Nock, Gun Maker To His Majesty, No. 4518, Circa 1709-95
Sold for £16,312.50 inc. premium
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A Very Rare Cased .400 (70-Bore) Percussion Seven-Barrelled Goose Rifle
By H. Nock, Gun Maker To His Majesty, No. 4518, Circa 1709-95
By H. Nock, Gun Maker To His Majesty, No. 4518, Circa 1709-95
49.5 cm. barrels
Footnotes
Provenance
Piers Mostyn, Bt. (sold in the sale contents of Bredfield Hall, Woodbridge, Suffolk in about 1944)
W. Keith Neal Collection, C204
Christie's London, Fine Antique Firearms from the W. Keith Neal Collection, 8 November 1995, lot 37
Literature
W. Keith Neal and D.H.L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1740-1790, 1974, p. 110
Idem, British Gunmakers Their Trade Cards, Cases and Equipment 1760-1860, 1980, p. 119, pl. 435
Richard Akehurst, Game Guns and Rifles, 1969, p.18, pl. 22
Originally sold in 1995 with two manuscript notes (now missing) by W. Keith Neal, one listing the contents of the case, the other giving instructions for the use of the rifle, including a recommendation to 'pick up the birds quick', confirming that it was intended for geese. Also in the case was a manuscript letter from H. Nock's shop about the rifle, written by Nock's clerk James Wilkinson, who later set up in business on his own as James Wilkinson, gunmakers, a firm that survived until recently as Wilkinson Sword Ltd.
Seven-barrel rifles 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), where he described their use on roe deer as well as birds. Thornton even commissioned a fourteen-barrel example, preserved today in the Musée d'Armes in Liège
For further information on rifles of this type see W. Keith Neal & D.H.L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1740-1790, 1974, pp. 109-110








