Maverick said
The foreground is out of focus, can you redo the pic with the stamps in focus?

Sincerely,

Maverick  

Your camera is too close to focus.  Back off 6 inches or so.

Hello,

“44” is the caliber of the barrel.  “VP” is a “Violent Proof” which is a test fire of the barrel before it was assembled to rest of the rifle.  The other various stamps are inspectors marks applied during the manufacture of the barrel and the assembly of the rifle.

Michael

A small technical point first. All these marking on the barrel are not stamps. The stamp is the tool that is used to make the marking, which can also be a called a stamping.

Looking at the BPH markings the 1.305 represents the case length of the cartridge, 10.5 Grains the  charge – interestingly for a limited period of time this was followed by ‘Cord’ short for Cordite which seems to have been used on rifles and presumably handguns. When I contacted the two proof houses in the UK with photos to see if they could give me an exact period of time when ‘Cord’ was used – neither of them could tell me! There is much information on the web regarding the nuisance of proof markings as applied to British shotguns, which have a large following. However, when it comes to rifle proof markings on rifles there is less information in the public domain.

Other markings are obviously the bullet weight in grains and RN for round nose.

The date of proof for SB through crossed pennants is 1967. It was inspected by inspector number 2.

Regards

Alan