Product Details
WESTLEY RICHARDS & CO.
A .318 ACCELERATED EXPRESS BOLT-MAGAZINE SPORTING RIFLE, serial no. LT41571,
circa 1927, 26 1/8in. nitro reproved barrel (in 2024) engraved 'WESTLEY RICHARDS & CO. LONDON' and with the Westley triangle at the nocksform, block-mounted open sights with four folding leaf sights with white metal inlaid sight lines and marked 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500, block-mounted bead fore-sight with flip-up moonsight and chequered folding protective cover marked 'RD 489699', the receiver (with thumb cutout) with matt-top receiver ring engraved to the left side 'WESTLEY RICHARDS .318 ACCELERATED EXPRESS', hinged floorplate with lever release, figured pistolgrip stock with sling eyes, horn pistolgrip-cap (with screw trap) and horn finial, 15 1/2in. pull including 1in. recoil pad, weight 7lb. 15oz.
Provenance: The vendor has kindly supplied us with the following information regarding this rifle:
"One family owned from new by the 4th and 5th Earls of Lovelace. Ordered by Peter Malcolm King when Viscount Ockham (succeeded to the title 4th Earl of Lovelace in 1929)
The Locke King family and Earls of Lovelace were descended from both the poet Lord Byron and the great 17th century philosopher John Locke, "the Father of Liberalism ".
Viscount Ockham bought estates in Tanganikia early in the 1920s and friends included the famous Swedish hunter Baron Bror Von Blixen-Fineke, husband of Karen Blixen who later wrote "Out of Africa ". He built the "Fig Tree Club" for his friends and neighbours overlooking Lake Babati, which was run at one point by Bror's second wife Jaqueline" Cockie" Birkbeck. The club served as the social centre of the area and is probably the "little hotel overlooking the lake" that Ernest Hemingway wrote of in "Green Hills of Africa".
Ockham was a particular friend of Bror's nephew Baron Carl Frederick Von Blixen -Fineke, and after Carl Frederick's early death in 1950 he married his widow, Manon Lis . They left Africa before WW11 and divided their time thereafter between the Von Blixen estate in Sweden and Ben Damph estate at Torridon in Wester Ross Scotland."
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Estimate £4,000-5,000
S1 - Sold as a Section 1 Firearm under the 1968 Firearms Act