Charles
Lancaster
A London house shaped by barrel making, unusual mechanical ideas and a willingness to experiment across more than a century of British gunmaking.
From barrel maker
to inventive gunmaker.
Charles Lancaster began in the London trade as a barrel maker, working for Joseph Manton before opening his own Drury Lane premises in 1811. His barrels were supplied to other prominent makers, including James Purdey.
By 1826 Lancaster had moved to New Bond Street and was making complete guns under his own name. What followed was a family business distinguished not only by craftsmanship, but by a long sequence of patents and unconventional designs.
Built first on barrels.
The founder’s early reputation came from barrel making. From his Drury Lane workshop he supplied much of the London trade, including his former employer Joseph Manton and other emerging makers.
As the business grew, Lancaster moved to New Bond Street. In 1826 he expanded from specialist barrel work into complete guns carrying his own name.
The inventive second generation.
After the founder’s death in 1847, the business passed to his son Charles William Lancaster. His period at the head of the firm brought some of the most recognizable technical ideas associated with the name.
His 1850 patent for oval-bore rifling became especially famous. Hunting rifles, military experiments and later sporting-gun work all contributed to Lancaster’s reputation as a house willing to challenge convention.
More than a century of Lancaster experimentation.
Selected points from the firm’s development, from its origins in barrel making through the patent-rich Victorian era and into its later connection with Grant & Lang.
Rifling without conventional grooves.
Charles William Lancaster’s 1850 oval-bore patent used an elliptical form rather than conventional cut rifling. The idea became one of the firm’s best-known technical signatures and was applied to sporting rifles as well as military experiments.
The official company history records government support for the system, including oval-bore cannon during the Crimean Campaign and the adoption of the Lancaster Carbine by the Royal Engineers.
Innovation extended beyond the barrel.
Lancaster’s history includes work connected with centre-fire cartridges, extractor and ejector mechanisms and an assortment of unconventional sporting designs.
Under Henry Thorn, the firm became especially associated with distinctive guns such as the Baker patent Twelve-Twenty, the Beesley patent back-action design and multi-barrel guns and pistols.
Experimentation became part of the identity.
Many great British gunmakers are remembered for refinement of a familiar form. Lancaster is equally interesting for its willingness to pursue unfamiliar ones.
Oval-bore rifling, cartridge work, extractor and ejector development, back-action guns and multi-barrel designs all reveal a house that repeatedly treated the sporting gun as a field for mechanical experimentation.
That inventive streak gives surviving Lancaster guns a character distinctly different from many other London makers.
- Oval-Bore Rifling · 1850
- Centre-Fire Development
- Extractor & Ejector Work
- Multi-Barrel Designs
Cases and labels preserve the house identity.
Historic fitted cases help place surviving Lancaster guns within the company’s London story. Maker labels preserve addresses, awards and the visual identity that surrounded the guns when they were originally presented.
For a maker with such a long and varied history, those small archival details can be especially useful in connecting an individual gun to a particular period of the firm’s development.
The case tells part of the story too.
Lancaster’s fitted cases and labels show how the company presented its sporting guns as complete objects — combining gunmaking, accessories, house identity and provenance.
A London name that rarely stood still.
In 1932 Charles Lancaster was purchased by Grant & Lang, linking the historic maker to the lineage that would later become Atkin, Grant & Lang. New Lancaster production declined through much of the twentieth century, while the name passed through a series of later owners.
Modern custodians have worked to revive the Lancaster name, but the historic firm’s lasting importance lies in the remarkable variety of its ideas — from barrel making and oval-bore rifling to some of the most unconventional sporting arms associated with the London trade.
Continue exploring British gunmaking.
Discover the histories, craftsmanship and traditions of other celebrated British gunmaking houses.