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A Very Rare Cased .400 (70-Bore) Percussion Seven-Barrelled Goose Rifle image 1
A Very Rare Cased .400 (70-Bore) Percussion Seven-Barrelled Goose Rifle image 2
A Very Rare Cased .400 (70-Bore) Percussion Seven-Barrelled Goose Rifle image 3
Lot 266

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

23 September 2020, 10:30 BST
London, Knightsbridge

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

Converted from flintlock, with twist leaf-sighted barrels, signed along the rib between the two top barrels, each barrel cut with seven spiral grooves, case-hardened breech-block with gold line and engraved with a starburst on top, border engraved tang decorated with foliage and a Britannia shield, and with a starburst in the sighting groove, signed serial numbered flat bevelled lock with stepped tail, highly figured half-stock with cheek-piece and chequered grip, border engraved blued steel mounts comprising butt-plate (rust patinated) decorated with hanging game on the blued heel tang, trigger-guard (loss of finish on the tang) with a recumbent stag in a landscape on the bow, trigger-plate with large pineapple finial, rear ramrod-pipe en suite, silver barrel-bolt escutcheons, original brass-mounted ramrod, and some original finish: in original lined and fitted oak case (one partition loose) with accessories including rare brass charger, gang mould for fourteen balls, three wooden ball holders, brass-mounted powder-flask with bevelled elongated body, and leather flint wallet, the interior of the lid with illustrated trade label (minor damage and old stains) for circa 1789-1804, the exterior with flush-fitting carrying handle, London proof marks
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

Additional information

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