Nostalgia: The London Armoury

[David Nimrod]

The advert for the London Armoury Ltd was for the shop owned by George Staden

Correct

[FredB]

We only went once and found him to be very unfriendly. I needed a main spring for a Colt 32 Pocket Positive revolver and he admitted to having one but would not sell it to me as it was "a qualified gunsmiths job" to fit it.
Fred

[JSC]

George was notoriously grumpy, but it was a popular place to buy guns in the 80's.

I got my very first S&W 686 from there.

[pe4king]

I went there in the late 80's specifically to buy a Glock, he put me right off with his seemingly patronising attitude as I knew little about them, so I ended up going to Maskell's guns on my way home and bought a Beretta 92F instead happy days eh as was .

[David Nimrod]

I went there in the late 80's specifically to buy a Glock

Ah, I bought my Glock from Joe Beatham, at the Gunshop, in East Barnet.

I still have the receipt, dated 16/9/1996.

£300 secondhand, money well spent

[Triffid]

I bought my first 1911 from the shop in Commercial Road . . . must have been about 1987. One of their rebuilds - new slide on a GI frame IIRC. That went the way of all pistols after the handgun ban. But I also bough one of the original Chrony chronographs their a couple of years later and still have it!

Happy memories.

Triffid

[mag41uk]

Hmm Smiling George!

I pxed a Steyr GB 9mm pistol for a Ruger Vaquero and a Uberti 1866 Yellowboy carbine both in 45colt.
Just got into cowboy action shooting about 1993/4.

When I was in the shop some eastern types came in with a list of ammo they were looking for.
Several thousand rounds of sporting stuff 375 H&H 416 Rigby etc
He gave them a price which I think he just made up on the spot.
Could they export it ? "Yeah no problem"

I think he made a pile of money from the compensation and lives some where warm.
I have some info about him somewhere.

[JSC]

Not much from Google about him, but looks like he's in Spain now...

[MistAgain]

George could certainly be grumpy , but at the same time he could go out of his way to help genuine shooters .

I can recall him at one of the Pistol AD meetings spending ages trying to sort out a problem gun that a new shooter had foolishly bought from a "sells guns once a year part time dealer"

From the mid 80's till the hand in , George was never out of the top 3 handgun sellers in the UK , and most of the time was No. 1 .

It was mostly thanks to George that we had a database of gun and accessory values when the hand in started as none of the associations was prepared to help create one .

[SuddenlyMinotaurs]

I love reading stories like this, as the handgun ban was well before my time as a gun owner! Could you really get a Glock for under £400?!

It sounds like a lot of smaller gun shops went out of business as a result of the ban. Kinda feels like it shook every single aspect of the shooting community to the core. I can't imagine how bitter I'd have been, had I been a gun owner at the time...