Greensnapper Photography

It’s like stepping in to a time warp. Squeezing through the doorway behind the large drill in the engineer workshop, then up the low-lit steep, wooden stairs to the gunmaker’s above. At the top it’s not quite Narnia but definitely like something from a different time and place.

Up here the room is dark, but sunlight streams in through the south-facing leaded window on to the bench below where Haydn is working. It illuminates hundreds of beautiful old wooden-handled chisels, files and assorted tools. Some stand to attention like soldiers on parade in their respective positions against the low window-sill. Others scattered at ease on the bench, their location known only to their solitary commander. Each tool blackened over the decades, but still proudly retaining the strength and precision it was designed with, for the job. Solid and dependable. Made by the hand of a crafts person that has gone before.

I’d expected Haydn to be ageing, maybe even with a distinguished beard. But he’s in his forties, near clean-shaven, slim and with a quiet and gentle manner about him. He welcome’s me in to his workshop. It’s quiet, all but for the tiny, almost mute, noise of a radio for company. Around the edges Haydn’s apron hints at its former white, bleached brilliance. But now it shows the traces of tired hands, pausing to wipe away the dirt before returning to their manual labour. Familiar, skilled, comforting work even.

Much of the machinery looks like it hasn’t been touched for a long time, left in situ it seems for maybe thirty years. Some have fan-belts, stretching skyward. Reminiscent of early twentieth-century workhouse factories, once preserved in memory upon black and white photographic paper. Some have huge steel wheels to set their parts in motion. Some have spiralling drill bits. Some have blades.

Haydn works as we talk, filing and smoothing small metal components at a comparatively oversized steel clamp by the lit window. My questions are now coming fast, but he doesn’t seem to mind. I ask about the business. He reflects on its name Jesse Hill, called so after his now departed grandfather and namesake. Haydn began working for the family business as an apprentice at the age of sixteen, following in the footsteps of his father. It was expected, assumed even, that he would become a gunmaker too. I ask whether gun making is his passion, but I’m surprised to hear it’s not. He doesn’t even own a gun, but still has the highly specialist skill to make them.

I ask if Haydn has any photographs of Jesse Hill from the past. He disappears through the wooden door behind him marked PRIVATE, and in to the small one-man office, and returns holding a frame containing three black and white photographs. He talks of his father and grandfather, pointing warmly at each portrait as he speaks, and with nostalgia. The local Stirchley History Society would surely be interested in seeing these, I remark. As I silently reflect for a moment on what has been said Haydn rests the frame on a small circular, wooden stool, facing out in to the room as if his grandfather is now with us in spirit. His silent presence in the room.

I ask about the future of his business and learn that Haydn is the last in line. There is no next generation to take on the baton of responsibility. But what will happen to everything here once Haydn has gone? And with only one or two gunmakers remaining in Birmingham, this is surely becoming a unique but dying trade. We talk of heritage, museums, restoration and preserving history, craft and beauty. The campaigner in me sparks an interest in what I could do to help. But is it my place to interfere?

Haydn sets back to work at the bench and I realise that I haven’t seen anything that resembles a gun yet and I’ve been here now for half an hour, forty-five minutes even. With curiosity I survey the room again. How could I have missed it? There’s one leaning quietly against the legs of the bench – right in front of me. The double barrel of what seems to be a huge shotgun but without all its other parts. I don’t think I’ve ever even held a gun. There’s no technical or even sporting knowledge of guns stored for safe keeping in the farthest regions of my brain. I’m clearly not a gun expert or enthusiast. But Haydn is patient with me.

I’m surprised that the gun hasn’t been screaming ‘look at me’ all this time. Instead it has retained a vow of silence. Haydn picks it up to show me, and I become aware of how imposing it is. I rest my camera on its strap around my neck and pick up the gun from his hands. It’s weighty, almost unreal.

Haydn also shows me a newly restored shotgun, ready for his client to pick up at 3pm. It is slender, decorated with fine engraving flanked on either side by polished wood. He disassembles it pleasingly in to manageable, constituent parts. Haydn is at the beginning of the supply chain. Some of the guns he makes and refurbishes go to experienced collectors, some of whom then ship them on to clients abroad.

As I photograph Haydn now back at the work-bench clamp, there is a jarring moment when I realise I am literally looking down the barrel of a gun, in the line of fire. It’s a position I have never been in before. But there’s nothing threatening about this beautiful bold, object and its maker, a craftsman continuing the work of his father and generations that have gone before.

Stirchley Local History Photograph – Jesse Hill