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

Here is another skilled but largely unknown provincial maker.

Bedford has been a market town since the Middle Ages, located 74 km north of London, 105 km south of Birmingham, and 40 km west of Cambridge. The 19th Century saw Bedford transform into an important engineering hub and in 1832 gas lighting was introduced, the railway arrived in 1846, the first drains and sewers were dug in 1864, and piped water was provided in 1866, near around the time the gun below was made. In the 1860s Bedford had only one gunmaker, Henry Adkin at 11 High Street. He had two daughters and three sons, two of which eventually followed him into the business. In 1861 Henry Adkin employed one man and two apprentices, so he was a fairly typical provincial gunmaker.

While his was a small operation, Henry could put up fine work. This gun, a double-bite screw grip under-lever 12-bore, has no serial number (Adkin probably made less than 10 a year), the 29 3/4" damascus barrels have London proofs and have made it to this day with only slight pitting, and the gun weighs 7 lb 2 oz.. However, it is thoroughly well-made, and with a number of artistic flourishes: the dolphin-headed hammers with flanged noses, a fitted under-lever, the sculpted horn tip to the fore-end, unusually fine chequering, and well-executed acanthus-leaf engraving (it would be decades before the full-coverage tiny rose-and-scroll motifs would appear on guns).








In 1872 Adkin moved to 54 High Street, having the old building torn down and the new building purpose-made as a gun shop and workshop -- one of only three purpose-built gun shops in Britain. The design was in the Venetian Gothic style, topped with two guns dogs holding pheasants, and Adkin's initials "HA" carved in stone on the front of the building. Adkin's original shop now houses a MacDonald's, and the 1872 purpose-built building still stands, now a Subway's. Henry Adkin died in 1914, aged 93, and the business he started in 1844 closed for good in 1996 -- a pretty good run.

(image capture: May 2019 - 2020 Google)


(image capture: May 2019 - 2020 Google)