Quote Originally Posted by Son View Post
That article you found is almost all wrong. For starters there is no such thing as a no1 mk1. The rifle started as an LE Mk1* (long Lee Enfield) that has been shortened to range pattern. That means it belonged to a civilian range shooter while still a long Lee (30" barrel) and when the SMLE was adopted for rifle club target shooting, was converted to the new 25" barrel, either by replacing the barrel with a new made H barrel, or shortening the existing barrel. Usually if a new barrel, it would have the MkIII (No1 MkIII) front sight fitted. Yours, like the one (as far as I can tell) in the article, had the original barrel shortened and the original ramp forsight re fitted. Of course the foreend was shortened and shaped to take the original nosecap too. The conversions were done at Lithgowicon but many gunsmiths specialising in target shooting equipment also did conversions, usually incorporating Lithgow made H barrels with their own name on them, eg; "Motty" etc.

Interestingly, your rifle has a Metford form barrel with Enfield rifling... does it have a serial number on it?

At the outbreak of WW2 a lot of these rifles were handed in for the war effort. What they were depended on what was done with them. The range pattern rifles were used for home defence units as Bruce said above
I can second that. Being a member of a fullbore club at the moment, I've dabbled in the history of this stuff. What I've been told is that the club shooters resisted moving to the SMLE for as long as possible, because they weren't as accurate as the long lees. They eventually had to shorten their long lees to SMLE length to comply with the rules, until sometime, if I recall correctly, in the 1930's, they had to use a SMLE, in which case shortened long lees became obsolete.