On an unknown date in March 1971, on the outskirts of a village called Bishops Cleeve, a couple of miles north of Cheltenham and within sight of its world-famous racecourse, the doors slammed shut on the Smiths watch company’s main factory for the last time.
It marked the end of a chapter in watchmaking history: in a nation that had arguably done more to pioneer the science of horology than any other, there was no longer a single company making watches at volume. Pioneers such as George Graham, Thomas Tompion, Thomas Mudge and John Harrison loomed large in the shadows, but Britain’s brightest days were behind it (a sentiment that in 1971 might not have been limited to the industry of mechanical watchmaking)—and few would have thought that situation likely to change.
Even in Switzerland, the fate of the mechanical watch hung in the balance following the successful invention and miniaturisation of quartz watches by Seiko.
The closure of Smiths’ Cheltenham factory, which had produced watches for the military in World War 2 and provided the watch worn by Ernest Hillary to the summit of Mount Everest, was poignant for those charting Britain’s horological decline, but merely one casualty among thousands as part of what the Swiss call “the Quartz Crisis”.
Fast-forward almost exactly 50 years (and around 100km south-east, to a site just outside Henley-on-Thames), and Nick and Giles English, co-founders of Bremont Watches, can be found standing on the green, beautifully curved roof of the Wing, their new headquarters, waving a large Union Jack in a tongue-in-cheek yet triumphant photo-op to mark the building’s official opening.
Five years in construction, it marks the brand’s latest step—and its biggest by far—in the long journey to bring watchmaking back to British shores.
Since Bremont’s founding in 2002, there has been something of a watch-brand revival in the UK, ranging from the high-end and artisanal (Garrick, Roger Smith) to the value-conscious, design-forward offerings of Farer or Christopher Ward (each of which teams British leadership with Swiss production).
But Bremont is unique in its ambition to make luxury mechanical watches by the thousand from scratch in this country—and now, it has the proper base from which to do it. WIRED went to find out what single-handedly reviving a highly specialised precision manufacturing business in a country where it hasn’t existed for two generations really looks like.
The very first thing you notice on a visit to the Wing is a smart “Bremont” sign as you turn off the main road; if this sounds mundane, consider that the brand’s previous HQ, on the other side of Henley, was tucked away, invisible from passers-by down a gravel drive and playing second fiddle, signposting-wise, to the “Toad Hall Garden and Machinery Centre”. In Switzerland, the first rule of building a watch factory is to erect your brand logo in letters that can be seen from space, so this is notable progress.
On a more serious note, the Wing does have real presence. Designed by local architects Spratley & Partners, it curves serenely across the south Oxfordshire countryside, its A-frame steel supports reminiscent of the struts of a canvas-and-timber aeroplane. Giles English says that the brothers’ vision was for something that spoke to their shared passion for aviation, and that they were toying with ideas such as a propeller blade.
Ultimately, this shape delivered the right mix of statement and practicality, but right from the off it was clear more space would be needed, hence the adjoining (and less spectacular) building that houses two storeys of workshops for the various stages of watch assembly and servicing.
One important element will always be outsourced, however: the testing process to which Bremont submits its MB watches. The initials stand for Martin-Baker, the world-leading maker of ejector seats, with whom Bremont has partnered since 2007 to produce the MBI, MBII and MBIII—the latter two on general sale; the first only offered to pilots who have had to eject. Each MB watch is frozen to -40 degrees C, then warmed to +40 C, subjected to an 18G shock, vibrated aggressively enough to simulate 30 years of life in the air, and exposed to enough saltwater fog to mimic six months on an aircraft carrier. Not to mention the one test an ejectable watch must really pass: rapid changes in air pressure as it rises to 100,000 feet before falling to the ground.
Right now, the space in Henley feels future-proof, with every room no more than half full, but looking ahead Bremont already has the plans and the ground left bare for a third building to join the existing two, should the brand’s growth demand it. There is no desire to live through the same sort of patchwork, make-do setup of the last 10 years, where various segments of the business have existed in London, around Henley but also at Silverstone and elsewhere. This feels like for the first time since it began, all of Bremont is under one roof and the better for it.
That roof, incidentally, is a living one; the building’s environmental credentials also include air-source heat pumps and a system that recycles the heat generated by the half-dozen or so milling machines, which can run 24/7 as they machine cases, mainplates and other parts. English admits that carbon-neutral status is their goal but they’re not there yet. “Can we do more? Without a doubt. We have to look at everything we’re doing as a brand—plastics, packaging, our travel, our boutique re-fits. It’s not just about recycled materials in the watches themselves. We have a young workforce that holds us to account on green issues.”
As you would hope of a newly-opened facility, there is a modernity about it, but more impressive—and far more representative of Bremont’s character—is an emphasis on warmth and comfort that’s rarely found amid the climate-controlled, sterile watchmaking rooms and grey, utilitarian manufacturing halls of Switzerland’s premier brands.
Take the aforementioned machines; each costing between £500,000 and £800,000, they are top-grade, 11-axis milling machines, up to the task of producing Bremont’s intricate Trip-Tick cases from any material you care to feed them. What’s unusual is that they’re just two double-doors away from the stylish centrepiece of the Wing, a full-height space where Soho House-style interior design has merged, fairly harmoniously, with the combined ephemera of the English brothers’ sheds, garages and attics: a Jaguar E-Type bonnet mounted to the wall; Action Man paratroopers perched chirpily on shelves stacked with books on military history, engineering and, yes, watchmaking.
In the corner is a mini Nissen hut, representing Bremont Military, the lucrative arm of the business that produces watches for servicemen and women around the world. Through this artfully cluttered environment will come the machined parts, wheeled on a trolley to the assembly workshops. You can enjoy an Earl Grey on the powder-blue sofa, watching the polo ponies training in the next-door field (the factory borders the Black Bears Polo Club) and not realise you are also right in the middle of a production line.
It’s this juxtaposition of polished, on-brand front-of-house and the industrial and back-office functions that stands out most. It’s a canny trick, too. You may think the Williams F1 car in the lobby is a marketing gimmick, but the brothers have realised that the factory itself is now the brand’s most marketable asset. As they see it, the most effective way to show people what they are about is to tempt them in to see where it all gets made. So, while there is a “boutique”-style environment adjoining the lobby that feels a little staged, it enjoys a huge window into the ground floor workshop itself. It’s akin to an open kitchen in a top restaurant. Tours are planned twice a week (with the profits donated to charity) and the whole building is set up to give you the best view possible of watches being assembled, serviced and fine-tuned.
The only thing you won’t get a good look at is the safe at the heart of the building, where 25cm-thick doors guard the site’s stock of watches. Corridor displays include a brief history of British watchmaking and a more comprehensive dive into Bremont’s two decades of limited editions—a body of work that brings together a sheet of the Wright Flyer, parts of Stephen Hawking’s Desk and one of the multicoloured beach balls that filled the “Spruce Goose” on its one and only flight.
These touches have the English brothers’ fingerprints all over them, but when it came to the business of actually setting up an effective watch factory—managing the workflow, specifying the technical requirements of each room and understanding how it will scale as production increases – for that, they needed an experienced hand at the tiller. Helpfully, they didn’t have to look outside their own team to find it.
Michael Bellamy, the brand’s head of technical, is an industry veteran whose previous roles have seen him oversee regional facilities for watch conglomerate Richemont as well as Audemars Piguet. With more than 50 factory builds under his belt, his advice was crucial on everything from the overpressure air-conditioning systems, which keep out dust and dirt, to the layout of each room and their relationship with each other.
It’s Bremont’s ambition to bring together every stage of watch production (known in the industry by codes “T0”, making movement components, right through to “T4”, packaging and shipping the finished watch), and with Bellamy’s help, the Wing’s 3,250 square metres has enough space for them to do it all, and—according to Giles English—the capacity to increase production from its current level of 8,000-10,000 to around 30,000 watches a year.
Followers of the brand will know that’s not their only ambition. Bringing watchmaking back to Britain is not just a matter of geography, but horology. Assembling a Swiss-designed movement entirely in the UK would be a step ahead of anything that’s currently on offer, but for it to feel truly British, Bremont needs a movement to call its own.
For any watch brand this is the key signifier of technical prowess and manufacturing legitimacy that bestows pure-blooded prestige on its maker. It is also, as Bremont has found, a serious challenge. One could easily spend tens of millions of pounds on the R&D and manufacturing necessary to create a movement from scratch, and since announcing a collaboration with Northern Irish watchmaking talent Stephen McDonnell in 2015, a Bremont-badged “in-house” movement has been on the cards, yet has also been permanently a year or two away from showing its face.
Now, English is rueful yet resolute when WIRED raises the question once more, emphasising the desire to create something to power the brand’s core collection watches without significantly raising their prices. “We’ve been on a weaving route for five years,” he says. “We can do one, but it costs too much. There have been a lot of investments, a few false starts… doing it to a price, that’s the hard thing now.”
Given the difficulty, and the ready availability of third-party movements, you might reasonably ask if it’s still as necessary as it might have seemed when they began. Even among watch purists, the last few years has seen a general recognition that a pursuit of “in-house” status for its own sake isn’t necessarily the best route for a small or medium-sized brand.
But it matters to Bremont, in the same way that being here in the UK—and in Henley specifically—matters. It’s why the brothers relentlessly pursue tie-ins with icons of British engineering and scientific history, and why they do so much with the UK’s armed forces and related charities. The Williams car is there to look snazzy, but behind it is a genuine skills-sharing programme between the businesses.
On a pragmatic level, English says, it is about control of their supply chain. With a pained expression he explains the laborious nature of dealing with Swiss suppliers at a distance—an experience not improved by Brexit. But it goes deeper than that—this is a fundamental principle that says the brothers are willing to pay more, and to do things the hard way, for their watches to be British-made.
Standing in their shiny new factory, here in this most English of locations (there is, almost unbelievably, a grass airstrip literally the other side of the road where the brothers can land one of their vintage aircraft), this is when you see him at his most impassioned. “It’s very important not to leave Henley; we’ve always been here,” Giles English says. “It really wouldn’t be the same.” Whether he achieves his goal of an in-house movement is yet to be seen, but Bremont has finally put down permanent roots. Now we shall see what it can grow into.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
