Roy is right, Ward & Sons 'Target' coil-spring gun is their best known product. It is a clear indication that the British gun trade was catering to the cheap, machine produced no-frills end of the market as far back as the start of the 20th century.
The BSA boxlock, machine-produced and plain is a better gun and another indication of this trend. Makes it all the more sad that the British trade died after WW2. It also indicated the falehood of the myth that the British gun trade failed because it would only produce hand-finished quality guns at a time when foreign firms were going over to machine production.
In fact, the boxlock made it possible to largely machine produce a shotgun as far back as the late 1870s and firms like Bonehill proved exactly that with the 'Interchangeable', which could be assembled from parts without any special hand-fitting or shaping needed.
Unfortunately, after WW2, Italy, Spain and Germany and Japan set to work investing heavily in their industrial sector and building modern factories, whie we sat down, flat broke after an expensive war and set about the costly business of dismantling the Empire.
Guns like the Ward 'Target ' and the BSA and the Bonehill 'Belmont Interchangeable' show us what we should have been selling successfully at the time when British shops were swamped with AYA boxlock and sidelock copies of British designs at low prices.
