The 'Elcho' is the oldest and most prestigious long
range rifle contest in the world, but its origins and those of
the shield are less well-known.
The Volunteer Force was formed in 1859 in response to the fear
of a French invasion. It started in a small way with informal groups and
rifle clubs, but such was the enthusiasm that the government authorised
the Lord Lieutenants of each county to organise local Corps. Thousands
flocked to join - partly because, as there were no drill sergeants,
the main concern was rifle shooting and people were keen to participate
in this new sport. There were virtually no rules about danger areas,
and it was easy to find suitable sites for target practice.
In the late summer of 1859, leaders of the Volunteer movement attended
the Hythe School of Musketry, and while there, resolved to further
the aims of the Volunteer Movement and rifle shooting by forming
a national association. This would be for “the encouragement of
Volunteer Rifle Corps and the promotion of rifle shooting throughout
Great Britain.” Their ideas accorded with those of the London
Rifle Brigade and a successful joint meeting, with the object of
forming a National Rifle Association, was held in November. Then
Lord Elcho, an enthusiastic protagonist of the scheme and a keen Volunteer, wrote
to the Times on 9 December, setting out the aims of the new Association
and the plans to hold a great annual National Meeting for rifle shooting.
The first of these would be in July 1860.
The match for the Elcho Shield – arose from a challenge by
Scotland to England in 1861. The terms of the challenge pleased
Lord Elcho, who had determined to give a prize to the National
Rifle Association’s annual meeting at Wimbledon. He wished
it to be a prize “for annual competition as an encouragement
to International Small-bore* shooting, and also that my name might
be perpetuated in connection with the Association and the volunteers,
and thus it will be long after I left this sublunary scene, when
otherwise all personal remembrance of ones work would be forgotten”.
He asked his friend George
Frederick Watts the well-known artist to design a suitable trophy,
and the iron shield (6ft x 3ft) is a triumph of mid-Victorian art.
Watts
was a well-known and popular artist who had painted many fine portraits,
but was perhaps better known for his sickly allegorical and historical
scenes. He showed frequently at the Royal Academy, and was seldom
without a sketch book in his hand, while his sculpture of a
huge horse and rider gave him the nickname of “England's Michelangelo”.
* Match-rifle was called small-bore in the early days.
Watts decided that the trophy would be an iron shield six feet
high, and Lord Elcho wrote to him on 14 January 1860 saying “I wish
to leave the conception as well as the drawing of our shield entirely
to yourself”. Watts drew the figures and scenes for subjects
suggested by Lord Elcho, as well as Britannia, and the medallion
head of Victoria. It is not known whether he was responsible
for the detailed decoration. The shape of the Shield was designed by the son of
a Mr Cayley, who was MP for the North Riding of Yorkshire from 1832 to 1862.
The model for the Englishman at the base of the Shield was a
young man called Reginald Cholmondeley, an amateur artist and
assistant to Watts. The model for the Scotsman is unknown. The project
was entrusted to Elkington and Co, who employed a Frenchman or Belgian by the
name of Mainfroid to do the work. The shield was to be executed
in repousse - the design being pushed out from the back
- while the bands delineating the different areas of the burnished
shield were to be gilded.
Britannia presides over scenes of contests between England and Scotland,
though at the base a Scotsman and an Englishman shake hands. Roses
and thistles (plus a spider) garland the edge, and a portrait head
of Queen Victoria takes a central place. Originally brightly burnished,
and decorated with gold bands it must have been magnificent. Sadly,
it is now a dull grey, for all the gilt has gone, and the surface
is no longer burnished.
Thus the prize. But though its design seems to have been well
underway by the spring of 1860 there was no suitable contest for which it
could be awarded. Then in August 1861 - after the second Wimbledon Meeting
- and on the eve of the second great rifle meeting in Montrose,
the following letter appeared in the Montrose and Brechin
Review, on 2 August 1861 and in the Edinburgh Courant on 30 July 1861:-
A
Challenge
Sir - On behalf of eleven volunteers of all Scotland,
I am requested to challenge eleven volunteers of all England
to shoot a match for two hundred guineas, on the following
conditions, viz:
10 shots at 700 yards
10 shots at 800 yards
10 shots at 900 yards
with any description of rifle; without any artificial rest or telescopic sight.
To be shot for at such time and place as the umpires may appoint.
I am prepared to nominate an umpire on the acceptance of this challenge by
England.
The two umpires nominated may select a third to determine all questions that may arise. - I am etc.
Robert Taylor
Hon Sec Angus and Mearns Rifle Association, and Scottish Rifle Gathering
Robert Taylor ran large and successful rifle meetings on the links of
Montrose, which were combined with Highland Games, side-shows, floral arches and flags,
open hours for the public houses, cricket and golf matches, a military review, civic balls, banquets and receptions to create a
gala week for between 30 - 50,000 people with special trains arriving from as far away
as Edinburgh and Glasgow. He must have been a well-known local figure, but so far nothing has been
discovered of the eleven challengers whom he represented. Were
any of the Rosses - keen exponents of long range shooting, or, indeed, Lord Elcho himself involved?
We do not know how much notice was taken of the challenge at the 1861 Montrose
meeting, but certainly nothing seems to have happened until it was brought
to the notice of the Editor of the Volunteer Service Gazette. He wrote
on 7 September
deprecating that the challenge had not been sent to him in the first place
rather than to “some provincial papers”, but otherwise he took
up the idea with enthusiasm, and hoped there would be a match that year.
Within a few weeks
Lord Bury (England) and Captain Horatio Ross (Scotland) had been appointed
Captains, and it was only accepted with reluctance that it would take a
little time to
agree the conditions and rules. These were completed by December 1861.
The match was now to be an annual event, at 800, 900, and 1000 yards, while
the question of a large money prize was dropped. The first contest would be at the Wimbledon
Meeting of 1862.
Lord Bury was the thirty-year-old son of the Earl of Albemerle, and treasurer
of the Royal Household. He was a fine shot who had tied for the Queen’s
Prize with Private Jopling in 1861. Horatio Ross was sixty-one, and the
Grand Old Man of Scottish shooting. He was a superlative sporting shot,
possibly only surpassed in his lifetime as a deer-stalker by his son Edward. He
had a 1400 yards range on his estate at Netherley in Kincardineshire, and had shot
with great success at distances up to 1800 yards using targets on boats
moored in the Montrose basin. Horatio Ross had initially discouraged the idea of
the match, as he felt that it would be difficult or impossible to find
eleven worthy Scottish representatives. The final number agreed upon was, of course, eight.
Lord Elcho, when he heard of the proposed match, promptly offered the Shield
as a prize. It would appear that though designed in outline, work on the
shield had not yet begun, and this was going to take two or three years
to complete. In the first rules, the names of the winners each year were to be engraved
on the Shield, but this did not happen and instead the background areas
are diaper (diamond) patterns of thistles or roses. The back of the shield, being
rough and later leather-lined is quite unsuitable. Perhaps a smooth lining
had been envisaged but was not practical. Each member of the winning team was
to receive a small silver shield engraved with the names of the winners paid for by
the losing side.
The first match was held on 9 July 1862, and attracted a great deal of
interest. The English firers wore the red cross of St George, and the Scots
the blue saltire of St Andrew on their arms, a custom still adhered to. Diagrams
of the English
targets were published in the Volunteer Service Gazette, showing all but
the last few shots fired. Lord Bury who had made the top score for England
at 800
and 900 yards, began disastrously at 1000 yards with eight misses and a
ricochet in his first nine shots. It was found that a piece of lead had
lodged in
one of the grooves of the barrel and he was permitted to finish with another
rifle.
His problems however made no difference to the result: England won by 166
points. In spite of this they had to be content at the prize-giving with
a drawing
of the design for the Shield “Lady Elcho tendered the drawing very
gracefully, but assured the victors that Scotland had failed because it
was only a sketch.
The Scottish eight were reserving their efforts till the actual shield
was made.”
In 1863 with Lord Elcho and four members of the Ross family in the Scottish
team, Scotland were again beaten, but had reduced the lead to 83 points.
Although a model of the Shield was displayed in the Exhibition tent, the English Eight
were only given the small silver individual shields.
By 1864, the match was considered as important as the Boat Race, or the
Eton v Harrow match at Lords, and Scotland were the victors by 25 points.
Though the Shield was still a plaster model it was substantial enough for the
Scots to carry off in triumph. The Eight were also given small shields engraved with team
names and scores. Two, those won by Wilken and Maxwell, still exist.
The design of the plaster model is rather different from that of the finished
Shield but resembles the drawing published in the Illustrated London News
in 1865. The crown is flatter with fewer arches. The Queen’s head is heavier,
and in an oval, not a circle. On the model, the wording on the garter is
in Roman lettering, while on the finished shield Gothic is used. There
are various other
minor differences, the most important of which is that Bruce's spider
is missing. The whole is coloured a dark dull grey. It would appear that
though Watts had designed the Shield roughly in 1860, the design was not
finalised until much later, as so much detail was changed between 1863
(the first model) and 1865 when the Shield was finished.
At the beginning of November 1864, the plaster shield was presented to
the Lord Provost of Edinburgh in Parliament Square before a jubilant crowd.
It was then hung in Parliament House. If the metal shield had not been finished before
the next Wimbledon Meeting, the model would doubtless have gone South to
be re-presented. In fact, it was two years later, in the Autumn of 1866 that Horatio Ross
wrote to the Faculty of Advocates “offering to present to the Faculty the model
of the Elcho Challenge Shield now hanging in the lobby of the Parliament House”.
This offer was accepted and they returned thanks to Mr Ross. The model
remains there to this day, hanging over a doorway in the Box corridor.
In 1865 the iron Shield was finally finished and ready to be presented
to the winners - England. It was a magnificent sight. Burnished till it
shone like silver and with the bands delineating the hexagonal area at
the top of the shield and the sides, bright with gold. A trophy worthy
of the match and Lord Elcho's
wishes. He wrote “I paid them [Elkington] £500 for it, but they said
it was worth £1500, and I believe it, as the work was most difficult and
laborious, and no finer specimen of modern repousse metal work is to be
seen.” This
then, is the trophy which is competed for each July, though now it has
lost its colour and is a worn shadow of its former glory. In spite of the
rule that the
Shield “shall be kept in some conspicuous place in the country representing
the winning team,” England did nothing after their wins in 1865,
67, or 68. It was not until 20 August 1870, that the Lord Mayor of London
received the Shield for the first time.
How then, apart from the inadequate written descriptions of the design,
do we know what the Shield originally looked like? It was in 1879, when
Lord Elcho left the active command of his regiment - the London Scottish, -
that “They asked me what I should like to have as a remembrance of our long and happy connection.
They proposed a dirk, but I mildly suggested an electro copy of the Elcho Shield,
which I said I had always intended to give myself, intending to place it over
the dining-room sideboard at Gosford, where, as they readily adopted my suggestion,
said memorial presentation copy of my Shield is now happily located.” Today,
the Shield shining behind glass, and in an ornate carved frame, forms the
centrepiece of the back of a sideboard some fifteen feet wide and twelve
high. This is
the third and last copy of the Elcho Shield, and the only one now that
resembles what Lord Elcho and GF Watts envisaged.
I am most grateful to Lady Wemyss for allowing me to see the Elcho sideboard
and to read Lord Elcho's memoirs. I should also like to thank Ted
Molyneux and Dick Ellis of the NRA Museum, the curator of the Watts Gallery,
Dr Robin Pizer and William Meldrum, all of whom helped in various ways.
References
Volunteer Service Gazette
Montrose and Brechin Review
Edinburgh Courant
The Scotsman
Illustrated London News
Memoirs of the 10th Earl of Wemyss and March (privately printed)
George Frederick Watts - MS Watts
History of the National Rifle Association - Humphry & Fremantle
Minutes of the Faculty of Advocates