Lee Enfield rifle

The Lee Enfield was designed by James Paris Lee a Scottish born American arms inventor and produced in the government arms works in the north London town of Enfield, originally established to produce the “Brown Bess” flintlock in 1804. William Ellis Metford was instrumental in perfecting the 0.30 jacketed bullet and barrel rifling. 

The first bolt-action magazine rifle, the mark 1, was adopted in 1888 and commonly referred to as the “Lee Metford”. It was a replacement for the .45 inch Martini Henry issued in 1871 and the .402 Enfield Martini issued in 1886. In 1895 changes were made to both the rifling and sights to accommodate smokeless cartridges and the new rifle was called the “Magazine Lee-Enfield”. The accompanying bayonet had a 12-inch blade and weighed 15oz, the magazine held eight rounds each having a brass cartridge filled with 70 grains of fine black powder. In 1892, the Lee-Metford Mark I was issued and in 1898, the year prior to the Boer War, the Lee-Metford Mark II was issued to the British Army. The latter two rifles had cordite filled rounds. In 1900, the Lee-Enfield Magazine Rifle Mark I was produced. It had a detachable 10-round magazine box. It was made available for colonial troops fairly readily but as the British Army had been re-equipped with the Lee-Metford Mark II, the latter was the personal weapon for the British infantry soldier in South Africa.

In 1896, the British cavalry was issued with the .303-inch Lee-Enfield Carbine Mark I weighing 7 pound 7ounces against the 9 1/4 pound of the Lee-Enfield Rifle and the back-sight was scaled to 2,000 yards against the 2,800 yards of the rifle.

The cartridges were loaded separately into the magazine and a spring at the bottom forced them up until one entered the breech when it would be pushed forward by operating the bolt. The reverse action ejected the spent cartridge.