In a roundabout way I am sort of indebted to King Edward the V11 for my Wood Bar Purdey. In the 1870s he was a constant visitor to Blankney Hall Lincolnshire which at the time was owned by his good friend the Viscount Henry Chaplin. Now Purdey made Chaplin a four gun set in 1869 and the story goes that Edward V11 had a preference for using No.1 gun of the set, this gun was given more attention in the line of servicing etc. So when the Estate was broken up to pay Chaplins debts because he was in inveterate gambler. This gun was better placed to survive to the 1960s but only just in fact it was about to be scraped until as a young man I was stupid enough to spend oodles of cash which I could least afford to purchase and restore it.

The only lessons in my life I truly did learn from where the ones I paid for!