# Old Rifle Range (Burton Meadow) Apr 11



## Decender (Apr 5, 2011)

This has been done a couple of times on here now but thought i'd post my pics up.

History is a little sketchy but this is what I have managed to find about this structure:

"A rifle club, newly-established in 1852, probably formed the nucleus of the Rifle Volunteer Corps set up in 1859. The marquess of Anglesey provided a shooting range at the north end of Burton meadow. When the volunteers were assigned to line regiments in 1883, Burton became the headquarters of a battalion of the Prince of Wales's (North Staffordshire) Regiment, later a Territorial Army unit. "

The scale of this thing is huge which you dont realise until you get right up to it. Also its remained graffiti and chav free as its pretty much out of range. Its not the best explore in the world but certainly worth a look if your in the area.


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## MD (Apr 5, 2011)

i like this 
have you looked at it on google earth ?
its mahoosive !!


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## night crawler (Apr 5, 2011)

MD said:


> i like this
> have you looked at it on google earth ?
> its mahoosive !!



It looks huge from the photo's love the bullet marks in the steel.


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## Dexter24 (Apr 5, 2011)

Loved the photos what a monster of a place.


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## Walrus75 (Apr 5, 2011)

MD said:


> have you looked at it on google earth ?
> its mahoosive !!


Tried but cant find it, Oh I feel so inept 
Never seen a set of Victorian butts before, I was gonna say that it looks an awful lot later but the fancy brickwork around the windows and on the buttresses marks it out as typical Victorian over the usual War Department or purely functional military architecture. That plus the ironwork 
Nice piccies matey.


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## gingrove (Apr 6, 2011)

That does seem to be a very large stop butt for just 4 firing points, how long was the range? I would guess that it must have gone back at least 600 yards or maybe even a thousand.The bullet fragments that you found look like .303 from the 1890s onwards. Before that they would been 577/.45 from the Martini Henry or big soft lead .577s from the 2 and 3 band Enfield muzzle loaders in use when it first opened. Nice set of pictures thanks for posting. ( I like the bit about it being out of range for the chavs)


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## hydealfred (Apr 6, 2011)

Interesting - thanks for posting.


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## Dirus_Strictus (Apr 6, 2011)

gingrove said:


> That does seem to be a very large stop butt for just 4 firing points, The bullet fragments that you found look like .303 from the 1890s onwards.:



The bullet fragments pictured are from the Mk VII and following marks of the 303 rifle cartridge. The Mk VII was introduced in 1910 and used a 'spitzer' shaped bullet rather than the round nosed bullet of the 1904 Mk VI, the spitzer or pointed bullet was a French invention introduced in 1898 for the 8mm Lebel service rifle.

The 'copper' coloured bullet in the centre of the last photograph is certainly not of British origin and looks very like a bullet from a 6.5 Mauser round.

When the 303 cartridge was introduced for the Lee-Metford rifle in 1888 it used black powder as the propellant, but by 1898/99 Cordite was the smokeless propellant used - in WW1 some Mk VII and the later Mk VIII were loaded with Nitro-cellulose propellant. The change from black powder to cordite propellant led to the modification seen on the butts today - the steel plate reinforcement to stop the more powerful rounds penetrating the brickwork.

As originally laid out there would have been more than four firing positions and the area in front of the butts would have a bank of earth to protect the target mechanism, the figures 1 to 4 relate to machine gun ranges - probably of WWII origins if info on other ranges is anything to go by.


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