Ignition source

Last month we talked about the famous English gun collector W Keith Neal and how different it was in his day when it came to acquiring new pieces for his collection.

If Keith Neal’s collection had a particular theme it could probably be best summed up as: ‘best guns by top makers’ and ‘unusual ignition methods’. One maker encompassed both these ideals: Reverend Alexander Forsyth. Born in Belhelvie, Aberdeenshire, in 1769, he was one of a group of people that Great Britain used to produce a lot of in those days: a genius inventor.

The good reverend