Shops around london

William Evans treat you like a proper human being whether you are loaded or not, and they will help you out with small things, weird ammunition requests, etc.
Agreed. I find Hollands equally helpful, even though I generally wear shorts held up with bailer-twine.
 
The Gun shop, Cat Hill, Barnet comes to mind.
Most of the old shops seem to have closed or moved out of London.
 
The Southern Armoury
171 New Kent Road
Southeast London:
TC (2) (Medium).webp
Oh hold on a minute I'm clearly suffering from lockdown fuzz:
1612444905566.webp
A sad end to a gun shop it was worth getting a parking ticket to visit. All but impossible to come away without having been 'entertained' in one manner or other by the owner!

K
 
Holland & Holland in Bruton Street. Probably closed currently due to lockdown.

I would often pop into there, as my office was just across St. James' Park.

Always "suited and booted", it never stopped them following me about in a ferocious game of "man-to-man marking". I must just have looked like I could not afford to be in there. Which was, point of fact, completely true.

Shoplifting for the discerning gentlemen... :rolleyes:
 
Holland & Holland in Bruton Street.
Addendum.

I was once in there when I saw a fairly elderly gentleman who was obviously a Texan. He had the hat and the boots and just oozed "cattle" or "oil".

He was, (dare I say) loud enough to hear whilst not having to eavesdrop.

He had, he explained to the world, had an invite to shoot at a Scottish Estate and needed to kit himself out with the appropriate attire. I did not get to see what they eventually sold him but I did see him pick out a pair of Holland shotguns...

As I said - I did not look like I could afford to be in there...perhaps I needed a ten-gallon hat...
 
The Gun shop, Cat Hill, Barnet comes to mind.
Most of the old shops seem to have closed or moved out of London.
I have bought and sold guns there. Big Joe can be an acquired taste. He comes across as quite rude if you don’t know him. Once you get to know him he’s still rude, but likeable!
 
The Southern Armoury
171 New Kent Road
Southeast London:
View attachment 191986
Oh hold on a minute I'm clearly suffering from lockdown fuzz:
View attachment 191984
A sad end to a gun shop it was worth getting a parking ticket to visit. All but impossible to come away without having been 'entertained' in one manner or other by the owner!

K

Yes I took a mate to see Tom Collins once and was certainly entertained by him once we had got past his guard dog/wife.
He clocked the accent and told us he was from Dowlais top (Merthyr Tydfil). After that it was out with his old scrap books showing us the firearms that he had supplied to various people including Churchill's body guard etc. etc.

I also encountered one of his customers at the Imperial meeting at Bisley a few years later. A friend of mine who was acting as range officer on the pistol range beckoned me over saying "you've got to see this".
There was a little Chinese guy at 15 yards shooting a PAA target (gangster target). The chap had on every conceivable type of holster you could imagine. He was like the old Bianchi advert. He would draw a gun and empty it towards the target then let the pistol drop to the floor and pull another pistol from another holster and repeat the process. In all he must have fired over 50 rounds at the target from numerous pistols including a baby Browning.
My mate told me that Tom had sorted him out. :)
 
Yes I took a mate to see Tom Collins once and was certainly entertained by him once we had got past his guard dog/wife.
He clocked the accent and told us he was from Dowlais top (Merthyr Tydfil). After that it was out with his old scrap books showing us the firearms that he had supplied to various people including Churchill's body guard etc. etc.

I also encountered one of his customers at the Imperial meeting at Bisley a few years later. A friend of mine who was acting as range officer on the pistol range beckoned me over saying "you've got to see this".
There was a little Chinese guy at 15 yards shooting a PAA target (gangster target). The chap had on every conceivable type of holster you could imagine. He was like the old Bianchi advert. He would draw a gun and empty it towards the target then let the pistol drop to the floor and pull another pistol from another holster and repeat the process. In all he must have fired over 50 rounds at the target from numerous pistols including a baby Browning.
My mate told me that Tom had sorted him out. :)
Those were the days!

I purchased my Rem 600 Mohawk Stutzen from Tom Collins shortly before he went to the great reloading bench in the sky. It was a toss-up between that or his other "running deer rifle" which was a Rem pump in 222. He used both at the BSRC long before I became a member.

At first he didn't want to sell me the Mohawk as he clearly thought I was some young punk who wouldn't look after it - how right he was!

K
 
While we were in there a boy came in to buy a gallon of paraffin. His shop was a mixture of gunshop and hardware store.
If you looked at his adverts of him and the professionals arriving at Bisley in a helicopter you would think that his was a massive gun shop.
 
I have bought and sold guns there. Big Joe can be an acquired taste. He comes across as quite rude if you don’t know him. Once you get to know him he’s still rude, but likeable!
Bought one of my first shotguns from him. Did not fit me then, never fitted me, would not fit me now. The only firearm I ever "moved on".

Acquired taste is right. You entered his shop and you entered his fiefdom.

Did teach me about mounting scopes though and spent some time in doing so whilst fitting one for me.
 
Back
Top