David Llewellyn Lloyd (1910-1996) was an English pilot, deer-stalker, ballistician and sporting rifle maker, of Northamptonshire, England and Glencassley Estate in Sutherland, Scotland. Although already an experienced pilot he was considered too old at 29, to be called up for service during the Battle of Britain in the Royal Air Force in the Second World War, instead he became the senior flight controller based at Tangmere, Sussex during the Battle of Britain. Extensive deer stalking, and frequent rifle shooting visits to Bisley ranges, Lloyd established the David Lloyd & Co. riflemakers company (registered company 05202134) at

Pipewell Hall Pipewell Hall in Northamptonshire, England, is a building of historical significance and is Grade II listed on the English Heritage Register. It was built near the ruins of a Cistercian abbey in 1675. At this time it was owned by the Barons of Pow ...

in 1936, and in the early 1950s developed the .244 H&H Magnum rifle cartridge, later adopted by Holland & Holland of London. Although Lloyd had no formal training as a riflemaker, he employed a team of craftsmen from the London & provincial trade to build the rifles in the workshops at

. Lloyd developed the distinctive Lloyd rifle concept, and from the 1960s to the mid-1990s he built magazine-fed sporting rifles based on commercial Mauser 98 & Sako actions with distinctively integral scope sights, capable of dependably high accuracy at long ranges, and of handling modern high-intensity, flat shooting cartridges such as the .244 H&H, the

.264 Winchester Magnum The .264 Winchester Magnum is a belted, bottlenecked rifle cartridge. Except for the .244 H&H Magnum and .257 Weatherby Magnum, it is the smallest caliber factory cartridge derived from the Holland & Holland belted magnum case. It was introdu ...

and the

.25-06 Remington Considered by many as the most balanced of the "quarter bores" for hunting medium-sized game, the .25-06 Remington remained in obscurity as a wildcat cartridge for nearly half a century before being standardized by Remington in 1969. Its design ...

. Lloyd noted would that he ''attached a rifle to a scope'', rather than the more normal saying of ''attaching a scope to a rifle''. '' Shooting Times'' voted the Lloyd rifle number 8 in its list of the top 12 Rifles of All Time, and '' Country Life'' magazine described Lloyd himself as “a National Living Treasure”. Lloyd rifles are owned by riflemakers

Bill Ruger William Batterman Ruger (June 21, 1916 – July 6, 2002) was an American firearms designer and entrepreneur, who partnered with Alexander McCormick Sturm to establish Sturm, Ruger & Company in 1949. Their first product was the Ruger Standard ...

and Roy Weatherby, and by several owners of Scottish deer forests. In his deer-stalking career of over 60 years, Lloyd killed more than 5,000 Scottish highland red deer stags, the vast majority of them with rifles built by his company. Lloyd's wife Evadne (“Bobby”, the longest-serving governor of the

Royal Shakespeare Company The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and produces around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, St ...

in its history) keenly supported him in his business, and helped him to source fine walnut blanks for his rifle stocks from various European sources. On Lloyd's death in 1996 she took on the business, which by then was doing little trade, and ran it until her own death in 2003, when the company was sold to John Shirley, formerly Technical Manager with James Purdey and Sons of London. He subsequently offered the business name, goodwill and records of the David Lloyd company for sale at auction in London in December 2006.

References

*http://www.auction-net.co.uk/viewAuction.php?id=300&offset=250&PHPSESSID=02dc66f39ebefeae5e80cb12b (Auction Sale Catalogue) {{DEFAULTSORT:Lloyd, David 1996 deaths Firearm designers 1910 births 20th-century English businesspeople