This my Purdey “Thumbhole Snap Action” a number one from a set of four built for Henry Chaplin in the 1860s and what a Victorian Toff he was, though I will forgive him that his life story is so improbable you couldn’t make it up.
This gun was saved from being scraped in the 1960s it was used as part trade for a Spanish gun then relegated to a pile of scrap guns to be sold a wall hangers, well it would not be sensible at that time to spend any money on it. The barrels are original Damascus still in nitro proof most of the screws have slots so worn they look like the Grand Canyon though it still closes up like a bank vault door. But unfortunately with no original finish because it has been worked hard and in continuous use for all but a few years of its life though the rebounding locks have all their original parts. And in my humble opinion being a bar in wood it has that sleek look of a fine muzzle loader, and for a breach loading gun this I feel these Purdy’s have never been bettered. At the end of the day when all said and done “it’s a Purdey” made in the days when that did at least mean something here in Brit land. It is slower to load than a top leaver gun but then it was built in an era when a man who had a “loader” to look after things in the field, so don’t judge this type of gun by modern standards well you would not expect your grandmother to run a hundred yards in ten seconds now would you, and this is your great great grandmother. I don’t mind being seen out with an older woman who works fast enough for me and she still has the Je ne sais quoi to turn heads.
