Side by Side: Holland & Holland

By Lydia Mansi on July 30th 2010

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There’s a mysterious building on the Harrow Road, opposite Kensal Green cemetery. Slim built, red brick and Victorian, it stands alone, four storeys high and isolated by the road at the front and the Bakerloo line at its back, staring blankly over the cemetery. Like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, nobody is ever seen going in, nobody is ever seen coming out, yet it is quite obviously in use. The fire escape, railings and window frames are coated in a gleaming green, the property is clearly maintained. But there is no sign of life. Most locals barely register the building is there, let alone have any knowledge as to what goes on inside.

It is in fact a gun factory. And not just any old guns are made here – the green livery on the building’s façade might have been a clue – for this is the Holland & Holland factory, makers of some of the world’s most exquisite (and most expensive) shotguns. Constructed in 1898 as a purpose-built factory by Henry Holland, nephew of Harris who founded the company in 1835, it has since been in continual use as the company’s manufacturing base. There is a fabulous incongruity here, that a building situated in an area of London where guns are now too often the weapon of choice in drug turf wars is discreetly producing the highest-quality sporting guns in the world.

But then, this Victorian factory and those who work inside it seem to belong to a world away from the realities of modern-day NW10, and indeed, from the quiet luxury of the Holland & Holland shop in Mayfair. I’m met at reception by the factory manager Ed Workman, a strapping barrel of a man who looks as if he should be rounding up cattle in the Australian outback. In reality, he has just recently joined the company from arch rival Purdeys. Together with Boss & Co, these three companies have each been producing ‘best guns’ for more than a century. A best gun is a double-barrelled shotgun of the highest quality and finish. A top-grade gun from a top manufacturer intended to compete in the marketplace on the basis of quality, design, and workmanship rather than by price.

We first visit the machine shop, in the bowels of the building, passing piles of steel. It is noisy, hot and full of men. “Those are the start of the guns right there,” says Workman. Holland & Holland is unique in that it still makes its own barrels. The solid steel forgings will become the action – the heart of the gun. The steel is, of course, English.

The company was bought by French fashion house Chanel in 1989. This did more than buy a lick of paint for the building. Hi-tech computerised equipment now drills, mills and turns metal to the most precise measurement. These machines are allied with traditional gun-making methods and hand-tools, shiny with use, litter the benches. Managing Director Daryl Greatrex says it is this combination of the very best craftsmanship, allied with the best modern technology that makes Holland & Holland standout. “Our craftsmen continue the tradition today; our hand made, bespoke sporting guns and rifles continue to be made using techniques that would have been familiar to craftsmen working on the bench 100 years ago.” Workman puts it a little more succinctly: “The whole place functions because of the fellas on the benches.”

Like Allan King, foreman of the machine shop. He is busy making pins. Each tiny part of every gun, right down to the smallest screw, is made in-house and each part, however small, differs for a bespoke gun. King will talk for England about his job. But then King is Holland & Holland. He joined the company in 1962 as a 15 year-old and will retire next year after 48 years of service. There is nothing about making best guns that King does not know and you can’t fail to notice his continuing pride in what he does.

It’s the same story throughout the factory. The men – and it’s 99 per cent men – are passionate about what they do. There work is unbelievably painstaking by the standards of our impatient world. A Royal side by side – the supreme Best London shotgun that the company is renowned for – will take upwards of 850 hours of highly-skilled precision work to complete. It takes 60 hours just to complete a pair of barrels. And let’s not talk about the engraving. This can take a further 500 to 1,000 hours, depending on the intricacies of the design. It takes two years from when a customer places an order until it is ceremoniously presented at Holland & Holland in W1.

Traditional tools are used throughout the factory. From the stocking shop to the barrel and action shops, every workman uses a smoke lamp in exactly the same way as their Victorian forebears would have done. When fitting metal to metal with utmost precision, the carbon deposit from smoke blacking expose any high points or irregularities to be filed away.
We meet Jason, foreman of the stocking shop where four or five men craft every stock by hand, their benches awash with tools. The process of filing the Turkish walnut that is used for every stock creates a fine dust that clogs the lungs. Jason and his men turn each blank lump of wood into a stock according to a customer’s measurements. Their height, weight the way they carry, whether they are left or right sighted, will all affect how the craftsman works on the gun.

Nearly all guns are bespoke, but they do create some guns for sale ‘off the shelf’. Jason explains, with a hint of lament, that international buyers, particularly Arabs and Russians, don’t want to wait two years for a bespoke gun. The tradition of classic English sporting guns is important to everyone here.

Downstairs in Holland & Holland’s flagship store in Bruton Street, waiting to meet marketing director Shan Davies, I pick up two framed handwritten letters. One is from Buckingham Palace, dated 1931, requesting a shooting catalogue for the King and another, from Sandringham is a thank you for ‘two cartridge belts that were sent to his Majesty.’ The company holds royal warrants for the Prince of Wales and The Duke of Edinburgh. Grand indeed.

Holland & Holland has been in Mayfair “well, forever”, says Davies. “As far as I’m concerned, Holland & Holland is Bruton Street,” she says. The company actually relocated from New Bond Street early in the 20th century but now occupies no 33, its relatively small shop front belying
the space inside.

And what a space it is. Wooden floors, rails full of beautiful expensive clothes and drawers brimming over with everything anyone might want for field sports, either here or on safari. In the men’s clothing department, a tray of falconry hoods, handmade in Wales, catches my eye. Each is numbered with its size and the bird it would fit. Davies says an Arab customer once came in and bought the whole lot.

At the back of the shop is the gun room. Glass cases display an assortment of shotguns, mainly second-hand ones that customers sell back to the company. Davies explains that many people will buy a pair of these guns while their own bespoke pair are being made before trading them back in.

The Holland & Holland experience, as Davies calls it, begins here. A customer will visit the gun room, have a chat with the salesmen, choose his stock (“ours are less shiny than Purdeys,”) and then get measured at the shooting ground in Northwood, Middlesex – chauffeur-driven all the way. There will be a tour of the factory, at least twice, before the gun is finally presented to the client.

So are all the customers lords and ladies? Davies, laughs. No, “it’s become far more diverse, democratic even” she says, adding that many celebrities order from them. She won’t, of course, name any names.
And it’s not just about guns. “The rest is important, too”, says Davies. The emphasis is on English design, manufacture and the very best materials. It isn’t cheap; a stunning tweed pencil skirt with leather detailing that catches my eye costs a might £2,500. But you are buying the very finest fashion. As Creative Director Niels Van Rooyen says: “The collection consists of clothing for ‘before’ a shoot, ‘during’ a shoot and ‘after’ a shoot and this has created what is a traditional British country lifestyle dress code.”

In the ladies department, a jewellery case houses beautiful necklaces and bracelets in an array of stones and colours. All reassuringly expensive and a small note says it has all been designed by Countess Pinky Le Grelle, ‘one of our country’s most experienced ladies shots’. It’s somehow quintessentially English; quintessentially Holland & Holland.

Holland & Holland, 33 Bruton Street 
W1J 6HH, 020 7499 4411, hollandandholland.com

Members Comments

• Comment by: coco 04 August 2010 - 08:06

  Excellent article reassuring to read that this fine English tradition still exists

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