Swadlincote Rifle and Pistol Club is situated in South Derbyshire, in coal mining country. Sadly the deep mines are now long gone and the final coal has been extracted, by opencast mining.

This might seem strange talk but the Swadlincote ranges would not exist without the former mining industry.

S.R.P.C was born, about 45 years ago, the vision and brain child of our founder member Alex Blyth, who together with Tony Sutton started the difficult task of forming a club from absolutely nothing.

Colliery spoil was used to build the backstop and flanking walls on the first range complex and as membership grew the buildings were constructed by members.

Both Alex and Tony were granted honorary membership due to their initial contribution and both are still, to this day, active members.

It is ironic that coal again caused a major change within the club’s history because the old range complex sat immediately above rich coal bearing seams which British Coal wished to extract, by opencast mining, and so they agreed to build a new range complex, for our members, which was to be situated about 1 mile away from the original site.

This is the five acre complex that S.R.P.C. now occupies, soon to be surrounded by woodlands as part of the National Forest project, but well positioned to grow into the future. S.R.P.C’s new range complex opened in 1992 and currently has more than 400 members.

It is a members’ club and is managed by a committee appointed annually by the members. All members’ subscriptions are used to pay the running costs of the club and the surplus, carefully managed by the committee, is used to allow planned growth of the club’s facilities, which have increased substantially since the pistol ban, following the Dunblane tragedy.