The Vickers Armstrong industrial giant stemmed from the foundation, in 1828, of the Sheffield steel and bronze foundry which later became Naylor, Vickers & Co.
Born in 1804, Edward Vickers, a miller, joined, at around the time of the birth of his first son, the steel firm run by his father-in-law, George Naylor. His two sons, Thomas and Albert, eventually also joined the business which, by 1867, had moved entirely into the hands of the Vickers family. The company's move into armaments came in 1897 with the acquisition of the Barrow ( in Furness) Shipbuilding company and its arms manufacturing subsidiary, the Maxim Nordenfelt concern of which Thomas had become chairman, and which company was itself a marriage of Hiram Maxim's firm, developed on his machine gun designs, and the Nordenfelt business, which produced the famous multi-barrel (four) quick-firing small-calibre cannon. The outcome of the merger was the Vickers, Sons and Maxim company.
With this bought-in shipyard and armament capability, the company progressed, in the early part of the Twentieth Century, into one of the foremost shipbuilding and armament conglomerates. The company enjoyed huge Naval contracts, borne out of the tremendous growth of the Royal Navy, in addition to a plethora of other military procurement requirements, particularly in armour, heavy guns and, by the time of the First World War, aviation. They are, in small-arms terms, probably most well known for the notorious and effective - "Grand Old Lady of No Man's Land" - the Vickers machine gun. Collectors of more readily publicly available Vickers' production items will also know them for their versions of the No.1 bayonet for the S.M.L.E. (Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle)
Vickers' foray into the small-bore rifle arena came in the very early 1920s. By 1924 they were advertising their Mk.I target rifles and accompanying sporting versions. In 1927 the business merged yet again, this time with Armstrong Whitworth, itself an amalgamation of the interests of the well known industrialist, Sir William Armstrong, and Joseph Whitworth, (see small-bore: a definition) the famous self-taught engineer responsible for so many advances in rifle design and most of the thread and engineering standards which unified manufacture in the latter period of the industrial revolution.
The Vickers Armstrong empire was effectively broken up, between the 1960s and 1990s, parts respectively forming into sections of, amongst other things, the nationalised British Steel Industry, the British Aircraft Corporation (latterly BAE), and GEC Marconi. At the end of the 'last' Century, Vicker's, who had acquired the Royal Ordnance Factory in 1986 ( now closed, and from whence the 'Enfield Pattern Room' National Firearms collection was, in 2004, removed to the care of the Leeds Royal Armouries), were taken over by Rolls Royce and ............ well, you probably know the rest.
Thomas Vickers died in 1915, having achieved significant recognition in the annals of British industry. He had been both a Justice of the Peace and Colonel of the Hallamshire rifles. His military interests no doubt influenced the continuing progress of the company, which now lay in the hands of his brother Albert. Albert himself died in 1919, shortly after the end of the First World War.
For whatever the reason, the company then chose to compete with the Birmingham Small Arms Company, W.W. Greener and those other arms manufacturers who took up the gauntlet on behalf of the Earl Lord Roberts who, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, was instrumental in the encouragement of rifle-shooting within the populace, and the associated formation of the Society of Miniature Rifle Clubs.
Indeed, Vickers' small-bore rifles proved, over their comparatively short production span between the early 1920s and the Second Warld War, to be highly competitive. They developed a deserved reputation for accuracy, still displayed by many of the surviving examples, although it is only fair to say that a proportion of these increasingly rare remaining rifles owe their latter-day accuracy to the post-war tender mercies of the A.G. and A.J. Parker and Parker-Hale gunsmithing companies, by dint of their "Parker-Rifling" system.
The Mark I Vickers Match target rifle with chequered furniture and folding aperture rearsight pivoted on the rear of the action.
The barrel has been subsequently fitted with mounting blocks for a telescopic target sight.
The 1925 advertisement for the early standard Mk.I and Mk.II Match rifle
Note that the rifle was sold as being a convenient "Take-down" model along the lines of the marketing of such systems probably initiated by W.W. Greener. with his split frame converted Martini-Henry rifles and their small-frame Martini equivalents.
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The Mark I rifle fitted with a Parker-Hale "Targetscope"
A Parker-Hale "Quickloader" ten-round ammunition block has been fitted to the stock alongside the action/receiver
Below left: the later standard rifle's "Special" barrel fitted with the later BSA/Parker-Hale style large-tunnel fore-sight with changeable elements, and, right: the early Mark I barrel with BSA type small diameter tunnel and flip-over ring/post fore-sight . Both barrels can be seen to be sleeved, but neither are marked as being "ParkerRifled".
Below: the standard rifle with a "Special" barrel
A more than cursory glance at this later mark of rifle shows the non-folding "Perfection" aperture rear-sight now fixed to the rear of the action. This sight was manufactured with a hole through the machining and through the rear of the action to permit the use of a cleaning rod from the breech-end without necessitating removal of the sight.
Additionally, it should be noticed that the comb of the butt-stock is significantly higher than that of the Mark I rifle. It is not clear in the above image, but the comb has been raised by inletting a closely matching section of timber to raise the cheek height by about 20%. This appears to be a factory modification rather than a retro-fit. Many rifles have been viewed with exactly this alteration, and it is believed that the early stocks were found to be so low in the comb that a general adaptation was made to the remaining factory stock ( pardon the pun).
The Mark II advertised below is actually a sporting version with upgrading options - read on.
The rake of the butt-stock and low comb can be observed in the above advertisement,
whilst the let-in woodwork is clear to see in the image below.
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The Vickers Champion
Below: the 1933 advertisement for the "Champion" model
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See page on the .22 MARTINI and the LEE_ENFIELD TRIGGER PULL
Below: the 1939 advertisement for the Vickers "Empire"
And, in the same year (1939), the advertisement for the Vickers "Jubilee" model
We reproduce below, the five page small-bore section of Vickers' own catalogue of 1924
Below, the "Perfection" rearsight with the clearance hole for a cleaning rod to be applied at the breech-end;
see the Mark II and Champion rifles illustrated above.
Below, the earlier folding rear sight fitted to the Mark I rifle shown above.
A little way outside our remit, but worthy of mention, the sporting rifle was effectively the target rifle
minus the aperture rear-sight and with a tapered barrel and a shortened fore-end.
Finally, apologies for the poor reproduction of this non-original copy advertisement for the Jubilee, and the specially "Stoeger" stocked Olympic Match rifles, but this page would not be complete without mention particularly of the Olympic version
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