Rigby opens Grade II-listed London home with museum

John Rigby & Co. has completed its move to 42 Clapham Manor Street, giving one of Britain’s oldest gunmakers a new London home where visitors can watch its craftsmen at work. The Grade II-listed former ballet school has been transformed over three and a half years, the company announced on 1 October, following its 250th anniversary celebrations in 2025.

What will visitors find inside?

The ground floor belongs to the gunmakers, with specialist workshops arranged so visitors can follow a gun through woodworking, metalworking and finishing. The building also houses the Rigby Academy, an engraving studio, a museum and a showroom, where vaulted ceilings and exposed oak beams frame the firm’s historic collection.

At the showroom’s centre sits Jim Corbett’s rifle, the gun carried by the celebrated hunter of man-eating tigers and leopards in India, displayed beneath the glass-topped table on which new guns will be presented to clients.

Why has the firm moved?

Founded in Dublin in 1775 and trading in London since the 19th century, Rigby is among the oldest gunmaking names still at the bench, and the builder of the .275 rifles that Jim Corbett and generations of stalkers carried. The move gives the company room to grow after more than a decade at Pensbury Place, the workshop where Rigby re-established its London gunmaking. Managing director Marc Newton said: “Pensbury Place gave us the home we needed to rebuild Rigby, and it will always mean a great deal to us. At Clapham Manor Street, we’ve been able to create the home we imagined for the next chapter of the company.

“I wanted the gunmakers to be at the heart of it. Visitors will be able to see the skill and care that goes into our guns, then step into a showroom filled with the stories that brought us here. Having Jim Corbett’s rifle at the centre of that room, with every new gun presented above it, says a great deal about what our history and craftsmanship mean to us.”

What happens next?

The new premises are open at 42 Clapham Manor Street, London, and the company’s full announcement, with photographs of the building, is on its website. For the wider trade the move is a vote of confidence in London gunmaking: a maker celebrating its third century has just signed up for its next chapter in the capital, with training, engraving and a museum under the same roof as the benches.