Haydn Hill stands in the middle of his Birmingham gun workshop, hands in his pockets, old machine tools, drawers and files around him.
Makers

Haydn Hill

Gunmaker

Birmingham

Documentary Archive · July 2026

I stepped aside on the pavement to let a distinguished white-haired man go past me into the building. He turned in at the door, and I understood that I had just given way to the man I had driven to Birmingham to meet.

Name Haydn Hill
Trade Gunmaker - action filer
Craft Action filing - the hand-fitting of a gun's action so barrels, body and lockwork close as one piece
Workshop Jesse Hill, Stirchley, Birmingham
Category Makers - people whose knowledge lives in their hands and cannot exist anywhere else
Session July 2026
Status Working practitioner · latest of a long line of Birmingham gunmakers
Archive ID MK-0039

The man on the pavement

The address I had been given was a name rather than a street: Jesse Hill. It turned out to be a red-brick building two storeys high on a side road in Stirchley, south of the city centre, the name painted on a board high on the wall and an old loading door boarded over beneath it. Finding it was easier than parking near it. I gave up in the end, left the car in a lot that plainly belonged to an office, and walked back towards the door.

The Jesse Hill workshop seen from the street: a red-brick two-storey building with arched upper windows, a boarded-over loading door and a painted nameboard high on the wall.
The building I nearly walked past. The address I had been given was not a street but a name: Jesse Hill. IM-1315
A painted JESSE HILL nameboard fixed high on the brick wall of the workshop, a row of arched windows below it and cloud behind.
The name on the wall. It belongs to the family, and Haydn works under it every day. IM-1377
A low-angle view up the brick front of the workshop, the painted JESSE HILL board and the arched windows set against a bright, cloudy sky.
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There was a man walking a little way behind me: white-haired, well-dressed, distinguished, with a bag tucked under his arm. I still was not sure I was ready to go in, so as we came up to the building I stepped aside on the pavement to let him pass. He turned in at the door. That was the moment I realised who he was. Is that Haydn, I said. Mash, he said - which answered the question and settled the introduction in a single word. I asked him where I should have parked; he told me a better spot, waited while I went and moved the car, and welcomed me in. It was one of the best mornings I have had for this archive.

A room that has not been asked to change

He took me in through the door I had hesitated over, and I stopped a step inside it. This is a working gunmaker's shop of a kind that has almost entirely gone. Old machine tools stand where they have always stood, a green centre lathe among them, run by hand and eye rather than by a computer. The walls carry files and drills in their hundreds; there are banks of small wooden drawers; and, oddly and wonderfully, longcase clocks keeping time in the corners. Nothing here has been tidied for a visitor. It is a room that has not been asked to change, and it goes on working because it was built to.

A wide view of the workshop: shelves of tins and tool boxes, a green centre lathe, a tall arched window and a longcase clock standing against the far wall.
The room end to end. A lathe older than anyone using it, and a clock keeping time over it. IM-1317
Haydn Hill in a white work coat faces the camera in the daylit workshop, a small tool in one hand, machines and shelves of parts behind him.
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A long belt-driven lathe running down the middle of the workshop beneath a tall barred window, bar stock and hand tools laid along its bed.
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An old cast-iron pillar drill standing against a white-painted wall hung with hand tools, its work table, vice and lamp in the foreground.
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Haydn Hill stands with his arms folded in a white coat in the middle of the workshop, arched windows and benches of tools running away on either side.
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Haydn Hill stands, arms folded, in a stained white coat and apron in front of an arched workshop window, a bench crowded with tools beside him.
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Haydn Hill stands three-quarters to the camera in his white coat, a dartboard and a red tool cabinet on the wall behind him, a machine in the foreground.
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Filing an action

Haydn's trade is action filing. In the old Birmingham way of making a gun the work was split among specialists - barrel makers, stockers, lock makers, engravers - and the action filer is the one who fits the action: the body of the gun where the barrels hinge and the whole thing locks shut. It is the fitting that makes a good gun good. A barrel, a body and a set of locks have to be worked until they close and open as if they were one piece of metal, with no play and no gap, and that is done by hand, by eye, by taking metal off a thousandth of an inch at a time, trying it, and taking a little more.

Haydn talked me through how the trade used to be organised, and it is worth knowing how old and how strange that division of labour is. Birmingham made its guns not in one factory but across a whole quarter of small workshops, the trade broken into more than fifty separate crafts - barrel forgers and borers, filers, stockers, lock makers, engravers, hardeners, browners - so that a single gun could pass through fifty pairs of hands before it was finished. The man who gathered all those bought-in parts and made them close as one gun was the setter-up, and action filing is the heart of setting up. Haydn is doing, by himself in one room, the job that once sat at the centre of a whole city's worth of out-workers.

Haydn Hill in profile at an old lathe under an anglepoise lamp, in a pale work coat, warm light catching the brass and steel of the machine.
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Haydn Hill at the lathe in three-quarter view, both hands on the work, a red cabinet and a wall of tools behind him in the dim workshop.
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Haydn Hill working at a machine by a window, both hands on the work, side-lit against the daylight, the dark workshop around him.
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Haydn Hill bent low over a machine against a bright window, in silhouette and hard shadow, the workshop dark around the pool of light.
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A view over Haydn Hill's shoulder as he works a part at the lathe, his forearm bright in the foreground and the machine and chuck beyond.
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Haydn Hill works a large pillar drill lit by a small green-shaded lamp, turning the table handle, shelves and a bicycle behind him in the dark.
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Haydn Hill stands behind a machine facing the camera under a strip light, the workshop and its shelves receding into shadow around him.
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Haydn Hill at the bench working a part in a machine, a wide daylit view of the workshop with an arched window and a bench thick with tools.
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The machines do the heavy cutting; the judgement is all his. He turns a part on the lathe, a thread of smoke lifting off the tool, then takes it to the bench and works it with a file until it sits right. Some of it needs heat, and he holds a small component in the flame of a spirit lamp, arm out, watching the colour of the steel come up. This is slow work and there is no hurrying it. It is also, by now, rare work: hand gunmaking is a recognised endangered craft on the Heritage Crafts Red List, its workforce ageing, and the number of people who can file an action the way Haydn does it would not fill this room.

An old capstan lathe mid-cut, a thin curl of smoke lifting from the tool, bright swarf and filed flat parts on the machine bed, window light behind.
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A close, shallow-focus study of the lathe tooling - a hardened cutting tip clamped in a tool post, brass and blued steel behind.
The cutting edge, up close. This is where the metal is argued with. IM-1320
A close study of a machine tool block set with a row of upright cutters and spindles, bright oiled steel against the dark casting.
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A close study of a machine vice and its screw, the jaws and handwheel bright with use, the mechanism dark behind.
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Haydn Hill holds a small steel component in the flame of a spirit lamp by a tall window, watching the colour of the metal, tools racked below.
Bringing the colour up in the steel. Heat is judged by eye, by the tint that runs across the metal. IM-1352
Haydn Hill in a white coat holds a small part in the flame of a spirit lamp, arm outstretched, side-lit by a tall arched window.
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Haydn Hill files a small part held in the bench vice, a rack of files laid out along the bench beside his hands.
The trade in one frame: a part in the vice, a file, and an hour to take off a thousandth of an inch. IM-1353
Haydn Hill's hand holds a small engraved gun part up to a measuring gauge, the fine scrollwork catching the light.
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A bench crowded with dozens of worn file handles and hand tools laid out together, their steel and wood catching the light.
Files by the hundred. Each one cuts a slightly different way, and he knows every one of them. IM-1371
A bench spread with files, drills and hand tools laid across the wood, a drawered cabinet and a stitched leather pad behind.
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Haydn Hill seen from behind, reaching into one of a bank of small black tool drawers by a bright window, a band saw beside him.
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Haydn Hill in profile in his white coat, one arm outstretched as he explains something, the machines of the workshop around him.
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The guns

The guns themselves are all around the shop, at every stage. An action sits upright in a bench stand with its lockwork open; a walnut forend waits beside it. He handed me a double gun broken open and pointed at the bright fitted faces inside, every one of them filed to close on its neighbour with no daylight between.

A shotgun action laid in a bench stand with its lockwork exposed, hand tools and a walnut forend on the bench beside it.
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Haydn Hill's hands hold a shotgun action and trigger plate in the white - bright unfinished steel - the fitted lockwork showing.
An action in the white, before any engraving. Every bright face has been filed to close on its neighbour. IM-1345
A break-action double gun held open towards the camera, the barrels and the bright fitted lockwork of the action face showing.
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Two hands hold the stripped body and lockwork of a gun action, the trigger plate and springs separated to show the fit.
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Haydn Hill holds the stripped parts of a gun in both hands at his waist, the barrels, action body and lockwork separated.
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Two hands each hold a sidelock plate up for comparison, the fine lockwork of each visible against the dark workshop.
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He turned a finished side-by-side over in his hands, reading the barrels along their length the way you would read a straight edge. And then there are the best guns, the ones that leave this plain bench and go out into the world carrying fine scroll engraving and gold-inlaid birds in flight across the action. That finish is another hand, an engraver's, and it only means anything because the fit beneath it is true. The beauty sits on top of the filing. It cannot sit on top of a bad job.

Haydn Hill stands at his bench turning a finished side-by-side shotgun in his hands, examining the barrels, a wall clock behind him.
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A finished side-by-side gun broken open in the hands, the scroll-engraved action and the deep-figured walnut stock catching the light.
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A close view of a finished best gun: fine scroll engraving across the action inlaid with gold game birds in flight, the stock deep-figured walnut, a blue tin beyond.
The other end of the trade. Fine scroll and gold-inlaid birds - the reason the fitting underneath has to be perfect. IM-1325
A finished best gun held broken open across the body, gold game birds inlaid into the scroll-engraved action, the walnut stock and an arched window soft behind.
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The name on the wall

The name outside, Jesse Hill, is family. Haydn is the latest of a long line of Hills who have filed gun actions in Birmingham, and he walked me back through it at the bench. He went to the trade at sixteen, apprenticed to his father; his father, he told me, had started younger still, a boy of ten at his own father's side. The forebear the workshop is named for died before Haydn was born, so the two of them never met, and yet Haydn works under his name every day. I am setting his account down as he gave it to me: the exact reach of the line, and how many Hills back it runs, is his to tell, and I would rather he corrected me than that I tidied it into something neat and wrong.

A framed set of old photographs on the workshop wall: a bespectacled gunmaker in a collar and tie at the centre, flanked by two working views of him at his bench.
The photographs on the wall. A Hill of an earlier generation, at this same trade. IM-1375
Haydn Hill holds up a small framed photograph of a young man in a hat, the machines of the workshop dark behind him.
Haydn holding one of his own. The line runs back further than living memory in this room. IM-1376
A close, low-lit portrait of Haydn Hill looking to one side in his white coat, the dark workshop behind him.
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What he keeps

A man is partly the things he keeps around him, and Haydn keeps a great deal. The steel shelves hold tins that stopped being made decades ago - Dunlop, Castrol, a box marked cotter pins - standing alongside the gauges and cutters he uses every week. Blued barrels wait on end in a dark nook. In one corner there is a glazed bookcase of old gun and shooting books, a cased perch, a cased kestrel, and, again, clocks - because Haydn is a clock man as well as a gun man, and the two habits share a love of small mechanisms made to last.

A tall steel shelf packed with old labelled tins and boxes, drill bits, gauges and a brass pressure gauge, a longcase clock just visible to the right.
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A rack of gun barrels and an air rifle standing on end against a workshop wall, a mug and old tins on the shelf below.
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A dark storage nook stacked with blued double gun barrels standing on end, old papers and rolled drawings above.
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A corner of the workshop: a wall clock, a bank of little steel drawers and a drill press, tins and oil bottles crowded on the shelves.
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A corner with a glazed oak bookcase full of old gun and shooting books, leather gun slips hung over it, a longcase clock, a roll-top desk and cased taxidermy on the wall.
The other collection. Old gun books, cased birds, and clocks everywhere you look. IM-1328
A road bicycle hung by its wheels on the whitewashed brick wall of the workshop, tools and boxes on the floor beneath it.
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A painted longcase clock standing against a brick wall beside a tall window, its arched dial catching the daylight, old bottles on the sill below.
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A finely painted longcase clock dial, its arch painted with small figures, Haydn Hill blurred in his white coat as he reaches to wind it.
One of the clocks. A painted country dial, wound and kept in a gun shop. IM-1358

A narrow staircase runs up through the building, dark between brick walls, with a longcase clock at the foot of it in a pool of window light. I went up and down it more than once during the morning, and each time it felt less like a workshop stair and more like the spine of a house that has held one family's trade for a very long time.

Looking down a dark, narrow staircase towards a landing lit by an arched window, a longcase clock standing at the foot of the stairs.
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The record

I came to Birmingham to photograph a gunmaker and found a man, a family, a building and a trade all in the same room, and all still working. That is the whole reason this archive exists. Haydn Hill files actions by hand in a shop with his family's name on the wall, and there are very few left who can do it. This page is here so that there is a record of that, made while the man was still at the bench.

Further in the archive

Walks and writings about this subject

Kindred entries