Bespoke Gun Rooms and Gun Cabinets

Gun cabinets, fitted gun rooms and concealed storage for shoots, country houses and private collections — hand-made in our Suffolk workshop and fitted across the UK. Cabinets from £7,000 plus VAT; rooms from £20,000.

Antiqued figured oak gun cabinet with dentil frieze and twin glazed doors over a panelled base

Made properly, and made to be looked at

Most gun cabinets are chosen for what they withstand. We have spent more than twenty years making the case that the same cabinet can also be the best piece of furniture in the room.

Almost everything sold in this category is a steel box. A steel box, properly fixed, does its job — but it also tells everyone who walks into the room what is in the house and precisely where. In a farm utility that does not matter. In a study, a library or a boot room that somebody has thought about, it is the one thing that spoils it.

Everything we make is hand-made in solid oak, walnut, mahogany or hand-painted hardwood, steel-lined behind the timber, and drawn around the collection it has to hold. Nothing comes off a shelf, and nothing is a standard carcass with a timber front stuck on it.

We work at three scales: a single cabinet, a fitted room, or joinery built around a cabinet you already own. Which one is right usually becomes obvious within ten minutes of seeing the room and the gun list.

Three ways to do it

Glazed oak gun cabinet with dentil cornice and fluted pilasters holding shotguns and rifles

Gun cabinets

From a pair of guns to thirty. Freestanding or fitted, glazed or solid, in oak, walnut, mahogany or hand-painted hardwood. From £7,000 plus VAT.

Wide four-door glazed gun cupboard in figured oak with panelled base, made for a large collection

Fitted gun rooms

We line the room in steel, clad it in timber, fit a steel firearms door clad to match, then fit all the joinery and gun racks. No building work. From £20,000.

Oak gun cupboard built into painted panelling with the door open showing the barrel rack

Concealed storage

Joinery built around a cabinet you already own, so the room reads as a library, a boot room or a run of wardrobes.

Which one do you need?

 Gun cabinetFitted gun roomConcealed storage
Best forTwo guns to thirty, in any room of the houseA dedicated room for the guns, the kit and the cleaningKeeping a cabinet you already own out of sight
What we doMake, deliver and install a steel-lined timber cabinetSteel-line the walls, clad in timber, fit a clad firearms door, fit all joinery and racksBuild joinery around your existing cabinet
Building workNoneNone — the room must already existNone
Delivered and installedYes, includedYesYes
Typical lead timeFrom about six weeksA few monthsFrom about six weeks
From£7,000 plus VAT£20,000Priced on the joinery

Not sure which applies? Send the gun list and a photograph of the room and we will tell you plainly, including if the answer is the least expensive of the three.

Recent commissions

What we build, and how

Close detail of guns standing in a felt-lined barrel rack inside a bespoke oak gun cabinet

Drawn around the collection

Side-by-sides, over-and-unders and rifles are all different lengths, and a rifle with a scope left mounted is a different object again. A cabinet built to a standard size is a compromise for everybody — you either waste a third of the space or take the scope off every time.

So we start from the gun list. Racks are set out so guns stand without touching, which matters more for the finish on a pair of London guns than most people expect. Heights are set so scoped rifles go in scoped. Where the certificate requires ammunition to be held separately, that is a separate lockable compartment with its own lock, not a shelf behind the same door.

After that it is a question of what else lives in the room: felt-lined cleaning racks, drawers for cartridges and chokes, brass fittings, and lighting on a door switch so you can see what you are reaching for.

Oak gun cabinet with a separate lockable ammunition drawer below the barrel rack

Timber, finish and the room it sits in

Oak, walnut and mahogany are the three we are asked for most. Quarter-sawn oak shows medullary ray and is hard enough to take a knock in a boot room. Walnut is the show timber — book-matched across a pair of doors it is the reason people stop and look. Mahogany suits a formal room and a French polished finish better than either. Where a scheme is already painted, we make in hardwood and hand-paint it.

All finishing is done in our own spray booth by our own polisher, not sent out. We antique where the room asks for it, because a new cabinet in a house full of old furniture can look wrong precisely because it is too perfect.

The workshop at Mickfield runs CNC and a Felder spindle moulder alongside full-size rod drawings on the wall, which is roughly the point: the machines do the repeatable work and the makers do the rest.

We talk to your firearms enquiry officer first

This is the part most makers leave to the client, and it is the part that causes every unpleasant surprise in this trade.

Responsibility for the security condition on a firearm or shot gun certificate rests with you, as the certificate holder. The adequacy of any particular arrangement, at any particular address, is a matter for your local police firearms licensing department — assessed case by case, taking account of the guns, the property and its location. No manufacturer can promise you an outcome, and any that does is telling you something that is not theirs to tell.

What we can do is remove the guesswork. Before anything is made, we set out the proposed specification in writing and agree it with your firearms enquiry officer. On completion, every piece leaves with a signed specification sheet — steel thickness, glass specification, lock model and its BS number, fixing type and centres — so the FEO can verify what has been built, and so you have a document for your insurer.

Prices, lead times and coverage

Cabinets start at £7,000 plus VAT for a single or double cabinet in oak. Fitted runs, figured timbers, glazed doors and matching drawer banks move that upwards. A full gun room is a different project, starting at around £20,000, because it is four pieces of work rather than one: steel lining, timber cladding, a clad firearms door, then all the joinery.

Lead times run from around six weeks for a single cabinet to several months for a substantial fitted room. Shooting is seasonal and so is this work — the enquiries arrive in spring for rooms wanted by the autumn, and the workshop fills accordingly.

We are at Mickfield in Suffolk, within easy reach of East Anglia, London and the Home Counties, and we install across the whole of the UK. For a room, we will always come and look at it before quoting.

Common questions

Does the law require a gun cabinet?

No statute requires a cabinet specifically. The Firearms Rules 1998 impose an outcome — firearms must be stored securely so as to prevent, so far as is reasonably practicable, access by an unauthorised person. A cabinet is simply what is normally considered reasonable in an ordinary domestic setting.

Is there an approved list of cabinets?

No. There is no Home Office or police approval scheme for gun cabinets or gun rooms. Independent attack testing exists and is worth having, but it is a commercial test result rather than an official approval.

Cabinet, room, or build around what I have?

A cabinet suits most collections. A room earns its place when you want somewhere to clean, change and keep kit as well as guns. Building around an existing cabinet is the least expensive way in, and in our experience it is how a good many gun rooms start.

Do you work with architects and builders?

Yes, and for a room we would prefer to. Most of what goes wrong in this category goes wrong because the joiner arrived after the walls were closed up.

Where we work

We are at Mickfield in Suffolk, and we deliver and install across the whole of the United Kingdom. Travel is included in the quoted figure rather than added afterwards. We also ship internationally: a great many collections abroad contain English guns, and there is a natural logic to the case coming from England too.

WhereHow we work 
EnglandDelivered and installed by our own teamGun cabinets
WalesDelivered and installed; four territorial forces administer licensingWales
ScotlandDelivered and installed; air weapons are licensed thereScotland
EuropeDelivered and installed where practical, or shipped for local fittingEurope
United States and beyondShipped through our freight partners, crated and documentedWorldwide

Send us your gun list

Send us your gun list and a photograph of the room, and we will come back with a drawing and a price. Made in Suffolk, fitted anywhere in the UK.

Start a commission

Further reading: gun room security, and what the rules actually say. Responsibility for the security condition on your certificate rests with you as the certificate holder, and the adequacy of any storage arrangement is a matter for your local police firearms licensing department. Information on this page is general guidance and is not legal advice.