Shop visit: Wentworth Sporting Supplies

Nestled in the middle of the country is a real gem; a shooting range with shop, or is it a gun club with a shop, or indeed a gun shop with a shooting range? Well, it’s all of these things. Chris and Amy Pannell were competitive shooters before setting-up Wentworth Sporting Supplies. They started with nothing, selling carloads of gear at the Bisley Phoenix meeting and after a few years trading they came across the vacant premises of what were Statham’s gunsmiths. The exciting thing was that it already had what used to be two 25-metre shooting ranges, along with a kitchen and retail space. Perfect for their business expansion, it took a massive amount of work to clear the old basement area out and refit the ranges to modern standards. They planned from the start to have one range as a dedicated rimfire/firearms range and the other an airgun range.

Airguns are the starting point to many future firearms shooters and Wentworth knows this. The amount of work they had to do is staggering, they fitted a full forced air extraction system to the rimfire range. This scrubs and captures any lead dust etc., there is not much of that generated apart from the burnt power due to their bullet catching system. They came up with a novel backstop system, being a basement of a large brick warehouse it already had steel plates protecting the back walls from it’s previous incarnation, they also use massive blocks of recycled car tyres as bullet absorbing material behind the target frames. I just had to have a go and I brought my GSG 1911 along for just that, the ranges are very clean and bright. Each has six firing points, the firearms range is cleared up to 45 long Colt and black power shooters use it at times, the superb filtration system can even cope with them.

Local Hero

WSS is also home to the Robin Hood Gun Club; this has 150 members shooting on club range times of Friday nights and Saturdays. This is a separate entity to WSS who rent the ranges to the club. They are Nottingham’s only Air Rifle and Pistol indoor shooting center open to the public, Nonmembers are welcome to hire a bay on an hourly basis, just call to book or to get more details.

The cafe is a good idea for those who will come a long way to visit WSS. It was nice to see the five-star food hygiene rating displayed, the coffee was nice too. The stock the shop carries is worth a visit to WSS on it’s own. They cater for airguns to full-bore reloading and everything in between. I noticed the Nikko Stirling and Vortex range of optics on display. As well as masses of MTN boxes, very useful things for the shooter. I managed to pick up a few bits I needed and I have almost everything!

Wentworth Sporting Supplies is a very well run gun shop with the added bonus of the two 25-metre ranges and the cafe. I can see why they are always busy! Pop along and see for yourself.

They are open, Wednesday/ Thursday 10am - 5pm, Friday/ Saturday 10am - 7pm.

 

Contact

T: 0115 920 3923 or
07879 891 744
E: [email protected]
www.wentworth-sporting.com

Address

Unit 32 Lower Ground
Basement. Byron Industrial
Estate, Brookfield Gardens,
Arnold, Nottingham, NG5 7ER