Product Details
WILLIAMS & POWELL
A FINE OAK PERCUSSION DOUBLE RIFLE CASE,
likely for a small calibre park rifle, the case fitted for 26in. barrels, blue baize lined interior extensively blocked for a selection of ivory handled tools, each handle finely initialled 'W' in Victorian black type, with several further initialled threaded handles with interchangeable brushes and nipple cleaning heads, two ivory pots (one large, one small) similarly initialled and an ivory tipped cleaning rod handle, glass oil bottle with florally-engraved hinged top and glass stopper, the case also with compartments for spare percussion dolphin hammers with original colour-hardened ornate serpent and scroll engraved hammers present, and also with an isolated finely scroll engraved action breech face with top tang, the lid interior with a Williams & Powell (Late Patrick) 25 South Castle Street Liverpool address trade label (with pencilled notes '5 1/2lbs. 1893'), the lid outer with a circular escutcheon with a further 'W' initial
Provenance: In one of the case compartments there is a railway label from Daniel Fraser gunmakers in Edinburgh inscribed 'Miss A Watt, Speke Hall, Garsdon Dock Station per Liverpool'
Miss Adelaide Watt was the last owner of Speke Hall and the Speke Estate in Merseyside and also the owner of the Spott Estate near Dunbar in Scotland. It is likely that the station referred to on the label should read 'Garston Dock', the Western Terminus of the St Helens Canal and Railway Company Garston and Warrington Railway, which in 1861 was extended to reach Liverpool. By 1864 a further line was added from Speke (just East of Garston) to Liverpool Edge Hill.
Speke Hall passed to the National Trust in 1942, having been left in the hands of trustees for 21 years after Adelaide Watt's death in 1921. Speke has a long history, the boundaries of the estate being set in 1334 (though reference to Speke is made in both the Doomsday surveys of 1066 and 1086, the latter survey reporting it to be held by the Saxon Thane, Uctred).
A very comprehensive history of the Speke Estate and the life of Miss Adelaide Watt can be found HERE (at www.spekearchiveonline.co.uk) including fascinating details from the registers of game shot on the estate between 1881 and 1901. A further matter of interest is a later auction house label attached to the guncase key handwritten with the name 'J.H. Hudson'. In the registers, the name of a Jennie Hudson (or The Hon. Miss Hudson) features regularly as both a gun and recipient of various game shot on the estate.
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Estimate £600-800