The Beaumont Era

After the Second World War, the prospects for London gunmakers looked bleak. Jim and Tom Purdey sold their majority shares in the business to Hugh and Victor Seely. They passed the company to their nephew, the Hon. Richard Beaumont, in whose ownership it stayed until 1994. When Tom Purdey retired in 1955, Richard Beaumont took over the running of Purdey.

It was Richard’s wife, Lavinia, who had the idea of taking adjoining premises in Mount Street, and offering Purdey customers a range of fine quality shooting wear. It was a great success, and a first for a London gunmaker. The Hon. Mrs Richard Beaumont designed the early clothing ranges herself.

In 1977, a chance conversation at a family gathering in Wales brought Richard Beaumont’s young cousin, Nigel Beaumont, to Purdey, beginning as an actioner’s apprentice.

In the decades since then his barrels, actions and stocks have gone out on dozens of Purdey guns. Nigel Beaumont is one of only a handful of men who knows how to make a Purdey through all of its processes.

He became Managing Director in 1993 and, in 2007, Chairman of the firm.