BY HENRY NOCK, LONDON, GUN MAKER TO HIS MAJESTY, LONDON, NO. 2949 FOR 1797

Details

A Fine 65-Bore Flintlock Seven-Barrelled Goose Rifle
By Henry Nock, London, Gun Maker To His Majesty, London, No. 2949 for 1797
With twist sighted barrels cut with seven grooves and signed on the rib between the two top barrels, silver fore-sight, shaped breech block with gold line and gold-lined touch-hole, finely engraved grooved case-hardened tang, signed case-hardened serial numbered lock with safety-catch, stepped tail, rainproof pan, bar link on the steel, and gold-lined maker's stamp, the inner side stamped with locksmith's mark 'AP' and much original blued finish on the working parts, figured walnut half-stock, chequered grip, cheek-piece, engraved blued iron mounts engraved with dogs, trigger-plate with pineapple finial, brass-tipped wooden ramrod, and some original finish, together with its wooden-handled iron mould for fourteen balls, and its copper and brass seven-nozzled powder-flask, London proof marks
20½in. (52cm.) barrels (3)

Exhibited

The Game Fair, Blenheim Palace, 28-30 July 2000

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

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 and A Sporting Tour through France. Thornton himself was so enthusiastic about them that he commissioned a fourteen-barrelled example, now in the Musée d'Armes in Liège

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

Henry Nock was the principal 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)

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