School Cadet Force Firearms and their Markings

Just reading the about the "King William College" KWC marking on another thread and brought to mind my old school and all the rifles the kids used to run around with on a thursday afternoon. In England in the post war years, many "secondary" (high) schools had a corps, (cadet force). Ours had quite an armoury including Enfields, Brens and Stens.
I remember well a master, "Praggy", using a SMLE in one arm as a starting pistol on sports day. Certainly got you moving!.

Anyway, I just wondered how many of these "School" rifles had specific markings applied as I saw a No4 for sale recently that had my old school initials as the prefix to the serial number and it made me wonder if there was any connection.
Did they belong to the Ministry of Defence or the School?. (out of service or in service?).

As a Cadet Armourer at my school, I can assure that we didn't apply any Unit markings to any of our arms. We had so few rifles (about sixty IIRC) that we didn't even bother with rack numbers.

This was in contrast to local Army Cadet Force Units who did mark theirs. This was often in the form of stripes based on Regimental/Corps e.g. Blue & White stripes around the upper forend for Royal Corps of Signals. There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to the the markings because other units would use the Unit designation, e.g. 50 Coy stencilled on the .

I have always assumed that, as we only mixed with outer Contingents on things like Range Days, there was less need for us to mark the rifles. Whereas the ACF units were always mixing for Weekend Training, Annual Camp etc.

All of our military stuff: Military Rifles, Brens, Stens, etc. belonged to the MoD, whereas things like target rifles belonged to the school.

Just prior to the war the Cadet Force rifles were withdrawn to arm the militia. The after the war, the Cadet forces, keen to re-start purchased thousands of rifles from ex WD stockpiles PLUS those that they'd acquired via the old boy network during the war. The old boy network was a bit like a one way lend lease only on a bigger scale! As a result, when they were re-equipped, they were full to overflowing with rifles, Brens, Stens, 2" mortars, Boys rifles, pistols and even 3.5" rocket launchers. A good percentage not properly accounted for but on either the MoD books, the schools registers or, like the commercial target rifles, on the local firearms licence. This situation remained until the early 70's or so until the security situation worsened and they were culled or rendered DP and a tight specification drawn up and implemented.

Cadets, especially those boarding school CCF's like mine certainly had a good time with plenty of ammunition of all kinds for their term time range days. I fired my first 3.5" rocket at Lulworth cove. Where it went is anyones guess but when you're 15, who cares. Things are much tighter now but even so, Cadets now have proper self loading SA80 rifles now

Peter, I'm so jealous. We had an 'as new' 3.5"rocket launcher, but by the late 60's there was no question of us being allowed to fire it. We had a brand new brick & concrete armoury built (because of the Irish situation) and racks of newly FTR'd No4s. We painted a rack number in white on each butt below the sling swivel, but that was all. However, of the five .22 No8s, one had a name and was quite popular with a few regular target shooters, a brass plate under the grip said ... Bulges. Thanks to you, now I know why.