Pre-dispersal SMLEs

[Roger Payne]

That's interesting Paul........about ten years ago I went up to Ryton Arms in North Nottinghamshire & had a look through about a thousand rusty, tatty & incomplete SMLE's. They were from what was originally an even larger batch that had contained many WW1 dated rifles as well. The WW1 rifles, being considered more desirable by many deact collectors, had all been deactivated & sold, leaving all of the later rifles. There were essentially two roughly equal sized groups; Ishapore post WW2 rifles, generally dated late 1940's & 1950's; & inter war BSA rifles. I bought about forty of the 'least worst' BSA examples. They were a roughly equal mix of 1926/28ish dated MkIII*'s & 1937 to 1940 dated MkIII's. They bore typical British military contract butt socket markings, & many bore an L prefix serial number. Many, in addition to standard British markings bore Arabic marks, though I've no idea what they mean! The last two digits of the dates on these rifles had been added by hand, & a few of us speculated that they were WW1 left-overs, although the L prefix on the vast majority also made me wonder if they could have been a specific contract. I don't know a lot about SMLE contracts & I don't have the reference books handy, but bat it out there in case it means something to someone......