THE HON. DENYS FINCH HATTON BIG GAME RIFLE
A CHARLES LANCASTER .450 (3 1/4IN) NITRO EXPRESS BACK-ACTION SIDELOCK EJECTOR DOUBLE RIFLE, serial no. 13315,
25in. replacement nitro chopperlump barrels (by the makers in 1929) with matt sight rib, open sights and ramp-mounted bead foresight (missing protector), barrels engraved 'CHARLES LANCASTER - 99 MOUNT STREET, BERKELEY SQUARE, LONDON', treble-grip stepped action with side-clips, carved fences, automatic safety with gold-inlaid 'SAFE' detail, elongated top-strap, Lancaster patent detachable dipped-edge back-action lockplates, engraved 'patent 64311', Rogers patent cocking levers, best bold scroll engraving, the makers name within a cartouche, retaining traces of original colour-hardening, 15in. well-figured pistolgrip stock with cheekpiece, rose gold escutcheon inscribed 'D.F.H. - NOVEMBER 1928', engraved pistolgrip-cap and chequered steel grip-strap, including 1in. rubber recoil pad, fore-end with grip release catch, weight 11lb.7oz., in its lightweight leather case, the lid initialled 'D. F-H'.
The makers have kindly confirmed that the rifle was completed in 1911, originally in .475 calibre (and subsequently rebarrelled by them to .450 calibre in 1929) for the Hon Denys Finch Hatton

Provenance: Denys Finch Hatton was born in England on April 24th 1887, the son of Henry Stormont Finch Hatton, Earl of Winchelsea and Anne Finch Hatton (nee Coddrington), a daughter of a former Admiral of the British Fleet. Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, Denys was a natural sportsman and scholar of the arts. In 1911 the 24 year old Denys bought land in British East Africa as an investment which would give him the freedom to spend his time hunting. He would spend every Autumn and Winter in Africa doing just that. In 1925 he became a professional big game hunter and took numerous wealthy and distinguished clients on safari - including H.R.H. the Duke of Windsor (the then Prince of Wales). His taste for adventure led him to learn to fly, and it was on May 14th 1931 that he died in a fatal plane crash in his Gypsy Moth near what is now the Tsavo National Park, Kenya. He is buried in the Ngong Hills and an obelisk marks his grave to this day. The story of Denys Finch Hatton and his love affair with Karen Blixen (his only known romance) is immortalised by Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in the Academy Award-winning film 'Out Of Africa' (1985).

Mr. Dalghren, are you the current owner of this incredible rifle? I'd love see more pictures. Anyhow below is John Sharp's Rigby double in 470NE. Looks similar!

I wish, it was up for sale in the UK. 80 000£

I met John over a drink in Zim a few years ago, lovely rifle

THanks! pretty nice target too! I'm booked for my third trip with John in 15 for leopard. jorge

A. Dahlgren

That rifle - and it's case - have a long and funny history at Auction in the UK.

I bid on it years ago but it went sky high,
mainly because two people wanted it. One was someone to do with H&H (?Ormiston?) and the
other was a lady buying it for her husband I think.

Anyway, it went far past the estimate and then kept going.

I think the story is on line somewhere
or do you know it ?

On a separate note, I used to own a very similar "Wrist breaker" Sidelock Lancaster that is now for sale on Champlins web site.

It was a ripper gun and was used by the US buyer to take Elephant, Lion and I think Buffalo.

http://www.holtsauctioneers.co.../December%202009.pdf

Hotlt's Auction

December 2009
Page 1
IN THE GUNROOM

Collectors are a strange breed. Take John Ormiston. He buys an empty case, and is then obsessed with finding something to fit inside. For years all that case held was promise. “Dear old John,” says Nick. “He’s got it badly.” A good friend since he first ventured into the gun trade, Nick was to play a role in John’s search for something to fill the case for it was a leather rifle case by Lancaster, and it bore the potent initials “D. F-H.”. John was hot on the trail of the Denys Finch-Hatton gun for which it was made. But the chances of finding the legendary big game hunter’s rifle were slim. Finch-Hatton had lost his life on Wednesday, 13th May 1931 when the Gypsy Moth he was piloting to Nairobi plunged to the ground and burst into flames. Was the rifle in the ’plane with him? At the time, Finch-Hatton was scouting for elephant from the air. The money-spinning potential of aeroplanes in Africa had occurred to him in 1928 when, answering an urgent call to outfit a safari for Edward, Prince of Wales, he flew over the Rift Valley for the first time. His reputation as a hunter had spread far and wide, and his reputation as a soldier was sealed when he was awarded a Military Cross in 1916 having faced off his attackers during an ambush in the now overlooked campaign in German East Africa. As a lover, Finch-Hatton’s reputation went global after Robert Redford played him in Sydney Pollack’s film, Out of Africa. A lushly romantic interpretation of Baroness Karen Blixen’s memoir, it scooped seven Oscars. In real life, Karen Blixen’s husband, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, shared the honours as Africa’s top PH with Finch-Hatton. Sharing became a habit and Bror Blixen took to introducing Finch-Hatton as “my good friend, and my wife’s lover”. Finch-Hatton had left from Karen Blixen’s farm, the farm amously “at the foot of the Ngong Hills...” for that last flight. The lovers quarrelled; she watched him go and tried (in vain) to slash her wrists. Another lover, pregnant by Finch-Hatton at the time of his death, was the racehorse trainer and aviatrix, Beryl Markham. In her own (superior) Africa story, West with the Night, she credited him with intellect and strength, quick intuition and Voltarian humour. “As for charm,” she wrote, “I suspect Denys invented it”. Here was a man for John to identify with; small wonder he wanted to add Finch-Hatton’s rifle to his collection. “I think I would have liked him,” he says. “Finch-Hatton was one of the Happy Valley set who knew how to enjoy themselves, real characters.” I spotted John recently riding the Piccadilly Line absorbed in the pages of a Holt’s catalogue and heading for a sale. Many of the lots were like old friends. “The sort of guns I like to collect - classic, best English porting guns - tend to go round and around,” he says. “There aren’t all that many of them.” Is it the search for December 2009

Page 2

a gun, or its acquisition that most excites John? “The thrill is finding ‘the impossible’ and buying it when you can’t afford it,” he replies. “If somebody gave me £10m and said, ‘make yourself a gun collection’, I (half) wouldn’t want to do it. It would be no more than an investment fund.” John’s collecting bug had attacked early, the nine-year-old plundering antique shops for swords and daggers, unthinkable behaviour in our own milksop era. “In those days people didn’t knife each other,” he points out,lugubrious as Eeyore. The first gun in his collection was a pinfire revolver with which his grandfather, a ship’s captain, had shot a mutineer – “either in the stomach or in the middle of the Atlantic, I’m not sure,” says John. He also remembers “going on the train from York to Bradford when I was at school to buy a double-barrelled percussion muzzle loader that I then used to shoot rabbits - I shot more rabbits with a muzzle loader than I did with a breech loader.” I have seen John shoot, and those bolting bunny exploits served him well. The Africa bug bit early too. “My prep school headmaster lent me a copy of The Man-eaters of Tsavo,” he says, recalling Lieut.-Col. J. H. Patterson’s 1907 tale of two lions in British East Africa who developed a taste for Asian and African railways builders, (135 of them), until the colonel taught them the ultimate lesson with his .303 Lee Enfield. The school boy was beguiled, and as an adult John lived the dream. He became the director of Holland & Holland and the founder of both The Scottish Sporting Gazette and The African Sporting Gazette, Africa’s premier hunting magazine. If ever there were a suitable candidate for ownership of the Finch-Hatton rifle, John was that man. But would his quest prove impossible? If not in the Gypsy Moth, perhaps the rifle was one of those impounded by the Kenyan government in the 1970s? Now Nick takes up the story saying, “Unbeknownst to John, at the time when he actually bought the case, the gun was already in England.” As part of Karen Dixon’s estate, it had been left to Jock Dawson, another famous PH who transformed himself into a respected conservationist after Kenya banned hunting in 1977, and headed the Rhino Rescue Trust in the Rift Valley. Precisely when John was in his reverie about the empty gun case, Nick was in Kenya with Dawson who died in 2004, aged 84. Dawson’s son brought the elusive gun to England, and it found its way to a Holt’s valuation day at Powderham Castle in Devon. Minus its signature case, and with no clue to its provenance, the gun was a Charles Lancaster .450 double rifle in poor condition. “It was consigned with a suggested reserve of £1,000 - 1,500,” says Nick. “I rang Dave Perkins who used to own Charles Lancaster and told him the serial number. Dave Boy was fabulous. One of the old-school East End boys, all self-taught gunsmiths. And he told me who the rifle was made for. Then I started to research, and next thing I knew we’d increased the estimate to £3,000. We had everybody after it, the world....” The impossible had been run to ground. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the lot described in Holt’s catalogue,” says John, and he measured the compartment for the barrels inside his case. “It matched the barrels.” Auction day dawned; how fast would the estimate be exceeded? “But I had never before been to an auction where I was so determined to buy a lot,” John recalls, voicing the rising thrill of obsession.

quote:

Jock Dawson, another famous PH

Naki

I notice the bit above.

I wonder if that is Jock Dawson
or John Dawson who lived in South
Australia who also died about 2004.

I have the pith Helmet that was
in his family that is in one of
the photos with Pondoro Taylor.

Was there ever any genetic analysis of the "material" found in and on the case?

I read a similar story in Double Gun Digest a few years ago - may havbe been the same author but there was an additional part to the story - of finding a gun case of an old family shot gun that fit like it was made for it.

DF-H's rifle came up for auction about 2 years ago. Not sure what happend then.

quote:

Originally posted by Nakihunter:
DF-H's rifle came up for auction about 2 years ago.
Not sure what happend then.

I think it was more than two years ago.

4-6 years.

And the price went sky high as Orminston and
another person - a lady went head to head for
it.

I was on the end of the phone and the guy kept
asking if I wanted to bid for it !!! LOL