BRITISH RIFLES - Catalogue of the Enfield Pattern Room

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Compiled by the late Herbert Woodend, well-known and widely respected curator/custodian of the Enfield Pattern Room; published in 1981 by Her Majesty's Stationary Office.

Known to staff, museum colleagues and many enthusiastic researchers as Herbie, he freely gave of his time and encyclopaedic knowledge to all comers. He was responsible for significant improvement in both the cataloguing of the collection and in further acquisition of exhibits - when funding allowed.

He oversaw the Pattern Room both when originally at Enfield Lock and subsequently at the R.S.A.F. site (Royal Small Arms Factory) when the collection was removed to Nottingham.

His catalogue is an important record of the most notable of British rifles. It gives notes on each, sometimes brief, and on occasion particularly detailed, but always succinct and inclusive of the most relevant points; it is a most valuable reference document. There was only the one edition and, now long out of print, copies have become difficult and sometimes rather expensive to come by. It is a document that should be made freely available to all researchers. We therefore present below a flip-page facsimile that digitisation has usefully rendered searchable.

Herbie's reference numbering within the catalogue was superseded by the new system employed when the Pattern Room collection was transferred into the fine care of the curators of the National Firearms Centre collection at the Royal Armouries at Leeds on the Millenium. His catalogue's "RB" prefixed numbers were replaced by "object" letter and number combinations, and no 'conversion' table was produced during the handover and re-cataloguing. It is therefore not always easy to identify the rifles Herbie described in relation to the NFC system.

It is hoped to generate a conversion table over time; and to that end we have made a basic data table to which all and sundry can contribute any transcription they may discover during their own research. The nascent table is beneath the catalogue, with the few already identified numbers that we have.

As mentioned, Herbie listed only those rifles he considered most worthy of note, but the numbering of these, from 1 to 402, is sequential. 84 of the rifles are illustrated.