When I was a young man, and did not know what I did not know, I assumed the Liverpool gunmakers, W. Richards and Williams and Powell were trading to take advantage of the well known Birmingham gunmakers with similar names.
I now know that both the Liverpool firms date back to 1780, pre-dating Westley Richards founded 1812 and William Powell founded 1802.
Your gun with the Preston address (the Preston and Liverpool branches of W. Richards were slightly out of step in their number allocation)bdates to 1900.
I have a very similar 12 bore BLNE from the Liverpool branch dated to 1898 (Nigel Brown , British Gunmakers Vol. 2 has the list).
Mine has Damascus Barrels identified by Drew Hause as English 2-stripe.
It is a sad comment on the market in the U.K. for boxlock non-ejectors that after a previous owner had had mine re-Nitro proved, the rib address re-cut and the barrels nicely re-browned the hammer price when I bought it at auction was no more than a tenth of what he must have spent to have all that work down.
Last edited by Parabola; 11/22/25 01:27 PM.
![[Linked Image from photos.smugmug.com]](https://photos.smugmug.com/Proof-Marks/i-hf5hL5D/0/MK3TNgkHLNwQBZqbzq6Lq4nBp6fmcDVBhXvm87k2s/M/W.%20Richards%20Preston%20proof-M.png)