Safari style: Westley Richards

The historic brand is channelling its adventurous spirit into a range of outerwear and accessories

Style 27 Mar 2022

Westley Richards

Lyell fleece gilet in moss, £345, Campaign shirt in light stone, £195, Pathfinder twill trousers in stone, £225, and medium Sutherland safari bag in hunter green and mid tan, £1,295, all Westley Richards

In a Victorian industrial building in Birmingham, all red bricks and large iron-framed windows, with a warren of workrooms, is housed Westley Richards, now the last remaining gun manufacturer in the city’s once-renowned “Gun Quarter”, and one of the oldest gun and rifle makers in Great Britain.

Birmingham was at one time the world’s gun-making capital, and Westley Richards has been handcrafting firearms here since the Napoleonic Wars – 1812 in fact, the year of the French invasion of Russia, when the firm was founded by William Westley Richards. The current address is only its third since then, and all have been within the central city limits. And among those who know about these things, this factory is celebrated for turning out pieces that are recognised not only for their technical excellence, but also for their beauty. The decorative skills of engraving and the setting of precious stones that Westley Richards can boast mean that some of its output will be kept pristine and on display and never actually fired. This is the art of gun making, with an emphasis on art.

Indeed, wandering around the factory, you cannot help but be struck by the artisan nature of the operation. Sure, there is the odd computer sitting on a desk, but predominantly the place is quietly buzzing with workmen at benches, filing metal and carving wood with precision and care.

But what really sets this place apart, says the firm’s creative director Stephen Humphries, is its thoroughly authentic connection to the spirit of adventure. ‘Westley Richards is all about the world of safari, the heat, the dust, the big blue sky, the grasses and majesty of nature,’ he explains. We are in a penthouse office-apartment where client entertaining and gatherings of the board of directors take place, and on the wall is a gallery of portraits of maharajas who have been customers of the Birmingham firm, while the decor of this lodge-like space is such that you expect to see rolling savanna when you look out of the window instead of the grey skyline. The juxtaposition is striking, but Humphries explains that this oasis symbolises how Westley Richards’ heart is in the great outdoors and with those who seek stimulating experience there.

But while half the factory is given over to the trade it has pursued for two centuries, the other is now engaged in making the type of leather goods that someone headed to Kenya or Tanzania would want to accompany them. What started a few years ago as an exercise in hand-making gun slips, cases and pouches, has now grown to become a department dedicated to the creation of a range of leather – and canvas – goods. The leather is tanned using traditional methods, and the canvas is tough and waterproof. This is not fashion, but kit – bags and rucksacks, each made entirely by one artisan from start to finish – that can withstand the hardships of expeditions but keep its good looks.

The bags and luggage have now also been joined by clothing: safari jackets, tweeds for the field, belts, hats, scarves, trousers, all speaking of a love of the natural world and desire to explore and experience it. It is this combination of style and performance, found in both the skills of the master gunmakers and the artisan workers fashioning the bags and accessories here, that makes Westley Richards one to watch…

westleyrichards.com