A Very Fine Volunteer Prize 2 Band Enfield Rifle by Reilly of London. 49” overall, 33” round sighted barrel with 3 groove rifling, standing foresight. The barrel with London proofs, ladder rear sight sighted to 1100 yards, percussion lock with fine engraving, line border, rounded engraved hammer & nipple protector on chain. Lock engraved ‘Reilly 315 & 302 Oxford Street London’. Walnut full stock chequered at wrist & also between the lock & first barrel band. With Silver oval engraved ‘Second Sussex Volunteers Presented to Pte Edward Anscombe 2nd Prize at 700&800 Yrds. Cuckfield Oct 21st1863’. Scroll engraved trigger guard & butt plate tang. Iron ramrod. Original leather sling.
Dated 1863
Fine rifle in very good condition, very good bore
J.C. Reilly of London. Joseph Charles Reilly was in business as a Jeweller in 1816 at 12 Middle Row, Holborn. London. In 1835 he was doing business as a gunmaker at 316 High Holborn, London, until 1847 when his son Edward Michael joined him in business, moving to 502 Oxford Street, London in 1848. In 1850 the company specialized in air guns that could produce a pressure of just under 500 pounds per square inch using the direct stroke pump of the time. Edward exhibited air guns at the Great exhibition in 1851 and was "overdone with orders".
The 2nd Sussex Rifle Volunteers was a part time unit of the British Army first raised from the county of Sussex in 1859. It later became the 4th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment. A detachment served in the Second Boer War. During the First World War, the battalion fought at Gallipoli, in Sinai and Palestine, and then in the final months of the war on the Western Front. In the Second World War, both the battalion and its duplicate served in the Battle of France and were evacuated from Dunkirk. The 4th Battalion then fought at the Second Battle of El Alamein, and served in the Middle East until the end of the war. It continued in the postwar Territorial Army until it lost its individual identity in a series of mergers from 1967.