Parker-Hale was a Birmingham firm best known for its target rifles, sights and gun-care products. It never set up to make side-by-side game guns of its own. When it wanted a range of good, affordable English-style doubles to sell in Britain and abroad, it came to Eibar, and Ugartechea built them.
These guns were sold as the Parker-Hale 600 series. The best known are the 640 and the 645. They were made for Parker-Hale over many years, until the Parker-Hale name changed hands in the early 1990s, and they were imported into the United States until about 1993. A good number are still being shot every season.
How to tell if your Parker-Hale is a Ugartechea
The Ugartechea name doesn’t always appear on these guns, but the Spanish origin is easy to confirm:
- Eibar proof marks. Take the barrels off and look at the barrel flats. A gun built in Eibar carries the Spanish proof-house stamps, the chamber length in millimetres and a letter date code. Our guide to dating a Ugartechea from its proof marks explains how to read them, and it works for Parker-Hale guns in exactly the same way.
- “Made in Spain” or a Spanish importer’s stamp on the barrels or action.
- The model number on the action or in the original paperwork: a 600-series number such as 640 or 645.
A Parker-Hale side-by-side with British proof marks only, or from another series, may have come from a different maker, so check the marks first.
What the model names mean
The number gives the model and the letter after it gives the stock style:
- E for English: a straight-hand stock and a slim splinter forend, the classic British game-gun shape.
- A for American: a pistol-grip stock, usually with a fuller forend.
The 640E is the English-style boxlock that most people mean when they talk about a Parker-Hale side-by-side. The 645E is the better-finished boxlock above it, with automatic ejectors and a silver-finished action. Both are Anson & Deeley boxlocks: the lockwork sits inside the action body, which makes for a strong, simple gun that is easy to keep running.
Specifications changed over the years and between markets, and some guns were built to special order, so treat this as a guide rather than a rule. If your gun doesn’t match, it doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine.
Other names, same workshop
Parker-Hale wasn’t the only firm to sell Ugartechea guns under its own name. In the United States, Bill Hanus imported a line of light upland side-by-sides known as the Bill Hanus Birdgun, and some of those, imported from about 1989 into the early 1990s, came from Ugartechea. Hanus also bought from other Spanish makers, so again the proof marks and the paperwork are the way to be sure.
Keeping one in the field
These are working guns, and most of them have worked hard. The usual needs at this age are a strip and clean, new springs, a check of the ejector timing on the 645, and tightening of an action that has started to come “off the face”. All of that is routine for the workshop that built them.
We service and repair Parker-Hale and other Ugartechea-made guns in Eibar, and we still hold the factory drawings of the boxlock action, so parts can be identified by number. For a gun that needs a valuation for insurance or a sale, we prepare written appraisals too.
And if the gun has made you curious about a new one, the Anson & Deeley boxlock is still made here today, as the Model 40N, with double extractors or with selective ejectors as the 40N EX.
