doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com The pinfire game gun

Great information is turning up, thanks to all the posters. The time of the early breech-loaders is surprisingly complex, considering it is mostly brushed over in so many gun history books. The conventional wisdom has been that you had in neat chronological order flint, then percussion, then the pinfire (if mentioned at all), then everyone happily jumped on the centre-fire bandwagon. The truth was quite messy, with many competing cartridge systems and gun designs happening concurrently, in Britain and mainland Europe. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the pinfire system rose to the pinnacle of fashion in Britain, and for the briefest time these were the best sporting guns in the world, desired over all others by the wealthy and powerful.

So, for today, let's look at some top offerings, a Holland, and a Holland.

Even a big London name had to have started somewhere. Typically, a firm started small around the output of one gunmaker, a few workers, and perhaps an apprentice or two, gradually building a reputation for putting up fine guns. Of course, the barrels, locks and assorted furniture would come from elsewhere, usually Birmingham and the "black country" ironworks, and the actioning, fitting and finishing done in the London premises or by skilled outworkers.

Towards the end of the 19th century many Holland & Holland guns were made by other makers, such as Webley & Scott, with the H&H name added. But that's much later than the period I'm interested in. I'm concerned with the period when Harris Holland made pinfires.

Harris John Holland set up in business as a tobacconist in 1835 at 9 King Street, Holborn, London. He was also a keen rifle shot and an enthusiast of live-pigeon shooting. During the 1840s he became involved in dealing in guns as well, and by 1850 he was a full-time gunmaker. The business moved to 98 New Bond Street in 1858, and his nephew, Henry William Holland, was taken on as an apprentice in 1860 for the usual seven-year term. Henry William became a partner in the business at the end of his apprenticeship in 1867. Harris John Holland retired in 1875, and in 1876 the name of the firm was changed to Holland & Holland, and much has been written about the firm and the wonderful H&H guns since then.

Harris Holland started making breech-loaders in 1857, when he made six of them. In 1858 he made 14, and in 1859 he doubled his output to 28 breech-loading guns. Production increased very gradually after that, averaging some 30-40 breech-loading sporting guns a year. In 1865 he built 66 breech-loaders, and by comparison only 19 percussion-cap guns. All of the breech-loaders up to this point were pinfires, as Harris Holland made his first centre-fire gun in 1866.

If these numbers seem low, they were actually comparable to the other top makers of the day, such as Boss & Co., Purdey, etc., and smaller firms could be making far fewer. This is why finding any early breech-loader in its original configuration is exciting, and if by one of the top makers, even more so. The total numbers produced were very low compared with later true "factory" output in the 1880s and later (and sporting arms production was always dwarfed by military contracts). So, any Harris Holland pinfire is a rare find. Holland pinfires are rare enough that no 1850s-1860s pinfires are illustrated in "The Shooting Field", H&H's own book on the firm by Peter King published in 1990, or in Donald Dallas's fine history, "Holland & Holland, The Royal Gunmaker", published in 2003.

Gun number 824 is a 12-bore single-bite rotary-underlever sporting gun with back-action locks, made in 1861 for Alan James Gulston of Dirleton and Derwydd, Wales, one of the largest landowners at the time. In the 1861 census A. J. Gulston was listed as 43 years of age. As is typical for early breech-loaders the fences are quite thin. The 30 1/8" damascus barrels, signed "H. Holland 98 New Bond St London" on the top rib and stamped "H.H" on the under rib, still have mirror bores. Interestingly the gun has a mechanical grip safety, a hold-over from percussion guns that I've only encountered on the earliest British pinfires. Also interesting is the concave "pinched" underlever finial. The gun weighs 7 lb 1 oz.







Gun number 963-A (possibly one of a pair?) is a 12-bore double-bite rotary-underlever pinfire sporting gun with back-action locks, made in 1863. The 29 3/4" damascus barrels, also signed "H. Holland 98 New Bond St London" on the top rib and stamped "H.H" on the under rib, have bores that are slightly pitted. Unfortunately Holland's records for the years 1860-64 are missing and the original owner cannot be traced, even with a clear family crest on the stock escutcheon (out of a ducal coronet, a wolf's head proper, which was used by several families such as Freeman, Seale, Ward, West and Wolseley). There is still much original colour on the trigger guard bow, heel-plate and fore-end iron, though the colour has faded elsewhere. On this gun the underlever finial is left smooth, like the Niebour. The gun weighs 6 lb 15 oz.







I've only ever seen one other Holland pinfire illustrated, in Geoffrey Boothroyd's Sidelocks & Boxlocks, published in 1991. I can't be certain, but that illustration might be of gun number 963-A, before it fell into my hands.