Nostalgia: The London Armoury

[David Nimrod]

Anyone remember their little shop, on the Commercial Road..?

Scan by David Nimrod, on Flickr

[Daryll]

I think I bought my ex-police S&W M19 from them...

[GeeRam]

Certainly remember those adverts at the time (makes you weep reading them now )

Honestly can't remember if I ever visited the place or not, have vague recollection I did, but it was a long time ago..........

[David Nimrod]

You had to press a buzzer, then look through an opaque (and presumably bullet proof) glass panel on the door...

If they liked the look of you, they let you in, and all was good!

I bought my Dillon Square Deal press from them, amongst other things.

[GeeRam]

You had to press a buzzer, then look through an opaque (and presumably bullet proof) glass panel on the door...

If they liked the look of you, they let you in, and all was good!

Aah.....not the place I was maybe thinking it was then......so that'll be a no to a visit then

[Chapuis]

Yep remember it well, though I think the title changed to "The Original London Armoury" at a later date.
They used to have full page advertisements in Guns Review and gave the impression of being one of the big players. Was slightly disappointed when on a trip to the smoke my mate and I called around to find that it was a relatively small shop combined with a hardware store. Mrs Collins challenged us at the door with the words "you can't come in here, you need a licence to buy these things", a wave of a FAC and we were in and then Tom heard our Welsh accents and that was it we couldn't do any wrong. Tom told us that he was from Dowlais top, Merthyr originally.

We then spent the next hour or so looking through old scrap books that Tom brought out that contained endorsements from satisfied customers of long ago including a letter from Inspector Thompson who was Churchill's bodyguard. At one stage we were disturbed by another customer who wanted to buy a gallon of paraffin and Tom disappeared out back to fill his container from the tank in the rear of the shop. Finally my mate asked if you could buy a couple of hundred jacketed .38 bullets for reloading that caused a bit of a palaver as Tom knew he had some somewhere but couldn't remember where, he finally found some old dusty bags of bullets which my mate bought for the original price which was ridiculously low.

The other fond memory of The London Armoury was of a Chinese man shooting on Winnans at Bisley midweek during the Imperial meeting. A friend had been watching him for some time and grabbed me saying you've got to come and see this. The guy had apparently been in to The London Armoury and Tom had sold him every conceivable type of holster you could imagine. He was like a walking example of the old Bianchi leather advert where John Bianchi is decked out in numerous examples of his product. The Chinese man was blasting away at a PAA target downrange and each time a gun ran out he just dropped it and drew another gun. There was a real assortment of various pistols littered around his feet. I'm just surprised that one of the NRA staff hadn't seen his performance because I'm sure that there would have been one or two infringements of the rules.
Old Tom obviously saw him coming and did him up like a kipper.

P.S. Perhaps I have got the wrong shop because looking at the advertisement above it mentions an email address and I can't imagine Tom Collins having a computer.
Tom Collins was the uncle of Lewis Collins (The Professionals -TV programme) allegedly and many of his full page colour advertisements in the shooting magazines featured a helicopter carrying the professionals and Tom supposedly arriving at Bisley.

[David Nimrod]

Tom knew he had some somewhere but couldn't remember where, he finally found some old dusty bags of bullets...

That's the place!

[dromia]

Wasn't there two and they had a spat over the name hence "the Original" being added?

Met him a few times and thought then he was very full of himself.

[GeeRam]

P.S. Perhaps I have got the wrong shop because looking at the advertisement above it mentions an email address and I can't imagine Tom Collins having a computer.

Indeed, given that this would have to have been pre-96/97, and that's a really early style email address....so, you'd had to have been quite IT literate at the time to have one.
I didn't even have a work email address in '97 and I worked for a big multi-national at the time!

[MistAgain]

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

Tom Collins "Original London Armoury" was close to the Elephant and Castle .

He was in no way related to Lewis Collins , that story was put about by Tom to cash in on Lewis Collins famne from the Professionals TV series , and his early days as a singer in a rock group .

Lewis was actually a very good shot !