New Loden Shooting Kit

This July we headed to Pale Hall (pronounced 'Palay Hall') in North Wales, where Chef Luke Selby heads an elite team of hospitality professionals with impeccable backgrounds in what must be one of the UK's most beautiful and secluded shooting hotels.

Luke is a young chef with the pedigree to drive the business forward in this incredibly well-renovated, historic shooting lodge. A former National Chef of the Year winner (2017), he has worked at Le Manoir (as executive head chef) and for Claire Smith at Restaurant Gordon Ramsey in Chelsea. Luke was head chef at Dabbous in Fitzrovia when he won the Roux Scholarship and later opened his own venure in London, Evelyn's Table, gaining his own Michelin star there.

The surroundings of Pale Hall are sumptuous and a little eccentric, the two dining rooms offer Michelin star grade cuisine and even the toilets must be among the coolest rooms in Wales. 

Here, we assembled a small team to photograph the latest Loden shooting suits from Westley Richards. Loden is a traditional woolen fabric widely used on the continent of Europe for hunting clothing. It is a beautifully refined, yet rugged and hard-wearing natural material perfect for British shooting conditions and offering a different option to thoise looking beyond tweed.

Here we can see Luke Selby and Anthony Alborough-Tregear (Westley Richards' Managing Director) sporting the new Loden range, which includes two styles of shooting waistcoat, breeks and a long-trouser option. Diggory Hadoke is wearing the latest Westley Richards lightweight Harpton tweed jacket and breeks.

All are carrying Westley Richards leather sporting equipment, including the leather-and-canvas and the leather gun-slips and the 'Anson' cartrige bag. All Westley Richards leather goods are hand-made in the Pritchett Street factory in Birmingham, where the department is growing rapidly, alongside traditional gun and rifle making.

Luke is, himself, a passionate and competent game shot and game features strongly on the menu in his restaurants. Pale Hall hosts shooting parties and offers local, quality driven shooting, as well as unbeatably stylish accommodation in one of the UK's most worthwhile detours from the beaten track.

We very much enjoyed being involved in this introduction of the finest British-made sporting clothing and leather goods from one of our great gunmakers to a real jewel in the crown of sporting hotels, now led by a shooting chef with the credentials to make it the best in the business.