Wonderful Westley Richards 10g Hammer Gun

The gun pictured here was made by Westley Richards and sold on March 27^th 1875 to Gye & Moncrieff, at the very juncture between hammer and hammerless guns changing fortunes.

That being the case, this 10-bore hammer gun should be what represents the pinnacle of hammer gun style at Westley Richards. After the introduction of the Anson & Deeley patent, it quickly rose to prominence and took over the bulk of production.

As a forward looking firm, very much at the centre of the Victorian drive for ever increasing modernity, guns with external hammers were soon seen as old fashioned.

However, closer inspection provides hints that the gun has stylistic elements going right back to the early days of the breech-loader, when the pinfire was the alternative to muzzle-loading.

The fences of the gun here suggest the action started life intended to be used for pinfire ignition, as do the hammers, with their flat nosed dolphins. One would expect the breech ends of the barrels to have upwards facing holes to enable the pins of the cartridges to stand proud for ignition.

However, as the photographs show, no such holes are apparent.

Instead, the fences have holes drilled through them to accommodate oblique driven centre-fire strikers, which are activated by the elbow of the hammer. During the transitionary period from pin-fire to centre-fire, many pin-fires were converted to centre-fire in a similar way, with the pin-fire holes being dovetailed over. There are even guns with both – holes for the pin-fire and secondary strikers for centre-fire, so either type of cartridge could be used.

Here, however, it is more likely that Westley Richards simply used an existing pin-fire action and made it into a centre-fire gun.

Despite the mechanical obsolescence for the time, both the quality and the current condition are remarkably high. It has best quality bar locks and an exposed bar, rather than the oft-seen bar-in-wood style of earlier Westley Richards hammer guns.

The wood is very well coloured and figured, very precisely checkered and the metalwork finely engraved with tight scrolls.

That it was made for Gye & Moncrieff is also interesting, indicating the kind of inter-dealing that went on between gun makers. The splendidly named Lynedoch Needham Moncrieff, the scion of a Scottish military family had a remarkable life. Born in 1841, he served in the Royal Navy, notably fighting pirates off the coast of China.

He teamed up with former Royal Artillery officer, Lionel Gye, in 1874 to form Gye & Moncrieff, who made and sold sporting guns until 1879. Moncrieff then left for South Africa, where he arrived just in time to join Lord Chelmsford’s forces routing the Zulus at the Battle of Ulundi on 4^th July and getting slightly wounded while doing so.

He then left to take up diplomatic posts in New Guinea and Jeddah, before heading to Sudan, where he was killed fighting the Mahdi at the Battle of Toker. Altogether, a very fitting life of adventure, commerce and dashing-about for a spirited Victorian gentleman.

So, this Westley Richards 10-bore was made for Gye & Moncrieff early in the company’s history. Mechanically, stylistically and historically it shines a light on a very interesting period of British history and represents it all very nicely.

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