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A CASED 16-BORE D.B PERCUSSION RIFLE BY JOSEPH MANTON & SON, PATENT, 6 HOLLES STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE, LONDON

NO. 1056 (SIC), CIRCA 1836

Details

A CASED 16-BORE D.B PERCUSSION RIFLE BY JOSEPH MANTON & SON, PATENT, 6 HOLLES STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE, LONDON
No. 1056 (sic), circa 1836
With browned twist barrels each rifled with ten grooves, the right-hand barrel with browned sweated-on bar for attaching the bayonet, signed in full on the rib, white metal fore-sight, blued iron back-sight incorporating two folding leaves, engraved case-hardened breeches, platinum lines and plugs, engraved case-hardened breech tang, signed engraved locks, one decorated with a lion, the other with a leopard and each with blued sliding safety-catch, figured walnut half-stock, chequered grip and fore-end, the butt with blued circular trap-cover engraved with a bush scene involving a lion killing a snake, blued butt-plate and trigger-guard, the former decorated with a tiger and the latter with European stags and a hind, blued trigger-plate with engraved stylised pineapple finial, the ramrod-pipe en suite, blued triggers, escutcheon, original ramrod, and the barrels retaining nearly all of their early browned finish, London proof marks (the remaining iron and steel parts professionally refinished): in lined and fitted mahagony case, perhaps the original (refinished, the interior rebuilt), the lid with brass circular escutcheon and flush-fitting handle, and with Brunswick sword-bayonet of Irish Constabulary type, with German silver hilt and in its original scabbard.
28¼in (71.8cm) barrels

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 15% on the buyer's premium

Lot Essay

The barrels, the stock and the trigger-guard are all numbered 1056 and it would therefore seem likely that the omission of a last digit is attributable to clerical error at the struggling Holles Street workshop. See W. Keith Neal and D.H.L Back, The Mantons: Gunmakers, 1967, p.279. No. 10.561 is recorded in the 1993 edition of this work.

Bayonets of this type were ordered by the Irish Constabulary from Tipping and Lawden in 1839. The bayonet on the present rifle would therefore have to have been an addition, almost certainly an early working one.

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