Of all those to hold the Purdey name, James Purdey the Younger was one of the most inventive. While his father established the business and built its reputation, it was under his watch that an impressive seven innovations were patented (or patents bought) by Purdey, including the pioneering Beesley self-opening action, which is still at the heart of our classic game guns today.
From the moment he took on the family business, James Purdey the Younger was determined to make a gun that couldn’t be bettered. So successful was he in this pursuit that the gun in question, the Sidelock Side-by-Side, has barely changed in more than 140 years. “If you say the word Purdey to someone who shoots, this is the gun they think of because it was so widely adopted,” says Purdey Gun Room Manager, Dr Nicholas Harlow. “It’s a feat of engineering and craftsmanship.”
James Purdey the Younger
To set the scene for the Sidelock Side-by-Side, two decades before its debut, Purdey was selling the first Side-by-Side hammer guns to take a modern cartridge. By the 1870s, experimentation with hammerless actions had begun and in 1879, former Purdey stockmaker Frederick Beesley invented a self-opening system that used the residual energy of the mainspring to open the gun. Beesley worked with Purdey to develop and patent this self-opening action the following year, and in 1881, the new Sidelock Side-by-Side gun was introduced.
It was a gun so radical for its time that it remains almost mechanically identical to the bespoke Side-by-Sides we build today, though ejectors were also added in the late 1880s. There are only subtle differences in styling too; the shape of the action-bar of the original was made to mimic the soft curves and grain of wood, whereas today’s are commonly finished with a beaded edge, creating the classic ‘square bar’ Purdey shape. By 1884, the self-opening action was used in nearly 65% of guns made by Purdey.
The Side-by-Side had many early adopters, and by the end of the 19th century every crowned head of Europe had become a Purdey customer. “There were some people who were famously anachronistic,” Harlow caveats, “including King George V and the Marquis of Ripon, who stubbornly stuck to their hammer guns. But it says a lot for the ubiquitousness of this design that they stood out because they wouldn’t use it.” Aside from these few, the gun’s popularity has only continued to rise. Naming it one of the best shotguns in the world, The Field commented: “From the technical perspective, the Purdey gun is possibly the greatest Side-by-Side ever made.”
Today, the design is virtually unchanged, with only the smallest of tweaks. Each one is made bespoke in the Purdey factory in West London and is a classic choice for those who favour tradition, though it’s still perfect for the modern sport. Elegant, lightweight and lightning fast to load, the Side-by-Side remains a gun that James Purdey the Younger would be very proud of.
