Purdey’s Sidelock Side-by-Side gun
James Purdey & Sons’ home on South Audley Street in Mayfair is a kind of top-end curiosity shop for rural sports enthusiasts. The cabinets that line its walls are rammed with curios such as pheasant-crested caviar dishes, deerskin-lined falconry gloves, and marquetry humidors that replicate the building you’re visiting.
Wind a few narrow corridors and you’ll end up at the fulcrum of British gunmaking: the Long Room, a space flanked by paintings of menacing-looking Purdey patriarchs from over the years, gunmaking tools, and handcrafted firearms from the past two centuries. It has hosted clients since the premises became
