Gunroom Gossip. A Gun for a Clergyman.

[T'owd Mon]

Victorian Clergy seem to have spent most of their spare time hunting, fishing or collecting butterflies. This gun seems to have been owned by one of the former persuasion. The gun in question is one made by the London Gunmaker Thomas Bland who started in 1840 and continued until 1989 when the business was sold to a buyer in the U.S.A. This is a top lever hammer gun with 30 inch cylinder bored Damascus barrels. The serial number and other clues on the gun put its date of manufacture to around 1888. Other marks on the barrel flats indicate that it was submitted for Nitro Proof to the London Proof House in 1984 and passed for smokeless powder with 2 1/2" chambers. A brass plate on the top of the leather case show that the owner was The Very Reverent R. Hogarth, Marton, Burton Constable. The title Very Reverent within the Church of England refers to the Dean of a Cathedral so someone quite high up the ecclesiastical ladder but try as I might I have so for drawn a blank on information about this person. More research is called for. It does get taken out an shot on the odd occasion.

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[Bigslug]

I'm almost tempted to get a plaque of "The Very Irreverent. . ." made up for my birch-stocked Mossberg 500.

That's definitely worth some digging. The guy assuredly left more of a footprint behind than just his bird gun.