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A Westley Richards & Co. .465 NE Second Quality High Velocity Nitro Express Double Barrel Hammerless Rifle completed in 1914 for J. Lyon & Co. of London.

Second Quality rifles were offered throughout the pre-war and between-the-war years by Westley Richards & Co. and mostly intended for export sales or to be sold to other retailers and sometimes under another trade name.

According to factory ledgers the rifle was completed in 1914 for J. Lyon & Co. of London and was part of a nine rifle order, three in .465 NE, three in .470 NE, and three in .476 NE all built in the same configurations. J. Lyon & Co. was an agent for the famous sporting arms retailer, Lyon & Lyon of Calcutta, India. This rifle is marked “Made Expressly For Lyon & Lyon, Calcutta” on the barrels.

Built on Westley’s patented Anson & Deeley boxlock action with fixed locks, double underbite and “club” shaped top rib third bite, tang lever, two triggers, disk strikers, and a manual safety.

In period catalogs the Second Quality rifles, “quality” in this case being the same as “grade” in the U.S. market, were well made, reliable firearms built to a certain price point. Offered with less options than Westley’s Best Quality guns and rifles that were available with the firm’s signature features likes detachable locks, doll’s head rib extension and snap lever work, and patent One Trigger. Instead, rifles of this grade were fitted with a rib extension similar in shape to the “club” symbol found in a deck of playing cards and a Scott spindle top lever referenced as a “tang” lever in factory ledgers. The rib extension served to keep the barrels from pulling away from the standing breech under recoil, since the action’s center point of flexing when firing is at the base of the standing breech and not at the hingepin. In addition, this “club” shaped rib extension acted as a third bite having a notch cut into the face of it, in which a bolt slides into and out of by moving the top lever.

Built as a non-ejector and fitted with 26” WR Special Steel saddle lump barrels, the rifle also has  1 standing/4 folding (100, 200, 300, 400, 500 yds) leaf Express sights that are platinum lined.  The ramp foresight carries a combination front sight bead, but its removable sight hood is missing.

The rifle has a full pistol grip with a solid horn cap, traditional sling eyes, a Silver’s type rubber pad and a right-hand beaded cheekpiece along with a Deeley-Edge snap forend with the traditional WR horn tip. The original stock oval remains blank.

The caliber is engraved on the top of the barrels as: “.465 Bore”, otherwise known as the .500/.465 NE and introduced by Holland & Holland in 1906. 

By our count, this is 1 of only 9 double rifles ever made by Westley Richards in this cartridge.

Complete in a green canvas case, the inside of the lid has Westley Richards trade label carrying the 23 Conduit Street address and a calling card reading: Philip K. Crowe, Ambassador of the United States of America, Ceylon

Ceylon is the same as the modern day island nation renamed Sri Lanka in 1972. Mr. Crowe (January 7, 1908 – November 16, 1976) was a journalist at the New York Evening Post, traveled in French Indochina and ran big game hunts before working for on ads in the magazine Life and Fortune. During World War II, he worked in the Office of Strategic Services where he was an intelligence officer charge of an area, covering China, Burma, and India. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service and was U.S. Ambassador to Ceylon from 1953 to 1958.

The rifle remains in fair overall condition. The barrels have evidence of an old re-black and while the rubber recoil pad is quite old, it is probably a later replacement. With the post war trade label in the correctly fitting case and the presence of a “proper” re-black to the barrels, it is very reasonable to think a light refurbishment of the rifle was carried out by the maker, sometime just after WWII. This would also be the same time Mr. Crowe’s hunting career was starting to bloom. Included with the rifle is a factory history, some information I have gathered on Mr. Crowe, along with two books authored by him.

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