CLOCKING IN
What goes on behind the gates of the finest watch factories is invariably a process shrouded in mystery. Fortunately, Synchronised was granted rare access to Bremont HQ, crossing the threshold to discover what makes the trailblazing British brand tick
We go inside Bremont HQ for an exclusive look at what makes the British brand tick
In the world of watches,
an exclusive club of elegance and precision, Bremont is a swashbuckling interloper: like Blackadder’s Lord Flashheart suddenly leaping on stage with Kraftwerk. The young British marque with an irresistible origin story produces a range of chunky, characterful chronometers that are built for adventure, and often from it. After all, what other brand crafts materials from battleships and fighter planes into its watches? To paraphrase another popular watchmaker, you never truly own a Bremont, you merely look after it for your inner little boy – the part of you that never stopped believing in tales of derring- do.
There’s a wonderful passage in To Kill a Mockingbird, in which the narrator’s brother Jem is occasionally allowed to wear his grandfather’s watch to school. On those days, he “walked on eggs”. With a Bremont, he probably could have dashed across a minefield. These watches are tested in polar weather and at oceanic depths – they are even shot out of planes to prove they make the grade.
“On a few of our sports watches, the construction is quite unconventional,” says Stuart Duff, Bremont’s head watchmaker. “For those models, the movement is encased in a soft-iron Faraday cage to protect it from high electrical currents and magnetism, and then it is suspended in the case for shock absorbance, ensuring that it’s more robust.
“No mechanical watch is indestructible, but you can set certain things into play to increase its resistance. With the Martin-baker and U-2 models, the bezels on top of the watches are hardened. Looking at a number of different brands, you can take the back off one of their watches and find it has quite a conventional assembly. What we do here is different.”
Based in a small, barn-like building just outside Henley, Oxfordshire, Duff represents the old-world craft of the brand. A thoughtful, carefully spoken man, he was all set to join the Marines as a teenager before a shoulder injury made a career reassessment necessary. “I had seen a trainee watchmaker job advertised for the Signet Group and, as I’d always liked taking things apart, I thought I’d go for it as a temporary measure,” he says. “It was 1989. I enjoyed it so much that I stuck with it.”
Almost 30 years later, he still has the bug. His small “workshop” actually has more in common with an operating theatre. The privileged few who are allowed to enter must don white coats and shoe covers, while the watchmakers sit in silence, plugged into headphones and focused on a series of microscopic tasks. The only perceptible movement comes from two cyclomats, or watch-winders, rotating in the centre of the room, laden with foam-bagged watches. They’re essentially miniature Ferris wheels used to simulate the movement of the wrist in order to carry out the most efficient testing.
EXACTING STANDARDS
Outside, the early August sunshine is fearsome, but the workshop is luxuriously cool. “We can’t open windows because dust will get in, so we need air con,” explains Duff. “You don’t want to be perspiring in here. Cleanliness is possibly the hardest part of the job. We limit access and
“WATCH PARTS NEED TO BE AS PRECISE AS WEAPON COMPONENTS”
have cleaners in all the time. The slightest speck of dirt can ruin a watch.”
Besides overseeing the assembly and after-sales sides of the brand, Duff is handson with Bremont’s coveted limited- edition pieces. He tends to assemble them himself, and should you be the lucky owner of a Victory (which incorporates copper and timber from Nelson’s battleship), or a Codebreaker (which makes use of materials salvaged from Bletchley Park, where mathematicians cracked the Enigma code during the Second World War), he is the only person who can service them. “They have certain complications,” he explains. “I do enjoy working on those. They can be a bit more of a challenge.
“I enjoy servicing. It’s quite therapeutic, if you don’t get any interruptions. It’s a lovely feeling, being able to make someone’s prized possession great again. Part of being a luxury watch brand means holding the materials for 25, 30, 35 years, so that clients can always have a piece serviced and returned to its original condition. There are a couple of exceptions, such as the Victory, which contains copper from Lord Nelson’s flagship of the same name. If that gets damaged, we can’t necessarily replace it.
“If you have a luxury watch, you need to take care of it and maintain it as you would a car. Some people will wear a watch until it stops dead. But there are all the seals and gaskets to consider. If you leave it and water gets in and damages the dial, it can become expensive.”
There is a subset of Bremont’s special editions that’s even more exclusive – some of its military watches are not even pictured on its website and are only available to serving (and former) soldiers. “We make some special forces ones that we can’t photograph, because it would identify people if they were seen wearing one,” says Duff. “One that isn’t secret is the MBI,” he says, referring to a special edition of the watch developed in conjunction with Martin-baker, manufacturer of the majority of the world’s ejection seats. While the MBII and MBIII are available to all, the MBI has to be earned the hard way. “It has a red barrel – if you ever see one, it means that the person wearing it has been ejected from a plane in a Martin-baker ejection seat. They need to prove it before they’re allowed to buy one.”
Duff’s favourite Bremont is a P-51, a limited edition from 2011 and a tribute to the Mustang P-51 fighter.
He is something of a frustrated watch collector (“I built up a collection, but it tends to go down when you have three children”). But he now has his eye on a U-2/51-jet, released this year as a sort of companion piece to the P-51, and to celebrate the centenary of the RAF’S 100 Squadron.
It’s fascinating to hear him talk about what draws
him to a watch. “Personally, I don’t find the look of Patek Philippe watches attractive, but it’s the sheer quality of everything that goes into them – you’ve got to take your hat off to that.
“I look at watches in a different way to your average Joe. They’ll be saying, ‘ That’s a lovely watch,’ whereas I’m saying, ‘It’s the movement inside that is beautiful…’”
HEAVY METAL
In the less bucolic setting of an anonymous industrial estate, manufacturing manager Tim Parker presides over the strength of the brand, manufacturing the parts that keep the watches ticking in adverse conditions.
It’s a typical factory setting – a very different world to the cool, quiet workshop where the parts they make will be assembled into Bremont’s creations. The only visible trace of the company is half of the winning wingsail from Oracle Team USA’S historic comeback in the 34th America’s Cup, which runs across most of the length of the ceiling – a nod to the brand’s partnership for the 35th America’s Cup. On a long rack by the door, Parker shows me the raw materials that Bremont’s dreams are forged from: long, cylindrical rods of grade-316 stainless steel.
Parker comes to the world of horology somewhat incongruously. His background is in defence. “I’ve been in engineering for 29 years. I started off as an apprentice in a gun factory and went on to work for companies that specialise in aerospace and defence,” he says. “At my last company, we made 20mm naval guns, 30mm aircraft cannons, 84mm rocket launchers and some sniper rifles.”
It might seem like a radical change of direction. But Parker sees it as a logical step. “I like manufacturing complex components,” he says. “With weapons manufacturing, it’s quite important that whatever you make works the first time, wherever you are in the world. Watch components are much smaller, but need to be just as precise – there are similar principles.”
Bremont’s objective is to produce as many parts as it can in-house, and the technical challenges of this are formidable. Parker’s description of the production of a plate, on which a watch’s mechanics are mounted, makes most brain surgeons sound a little flighty. “The holes that we drill in it range from 0.3mm in diameter to just over 1mm, but the tolerances are ±3microns, which are extraordinarily tight.” It’s an understatement. To give you a little perspective, the width of a human hair is 75-100 microns.
In one corner of the room, four glass-screened machines with chunky PCS bolted to them are in motion. Working around the clock, they will produce up to 800 bezels a month, and they are Parker’s pride and joy. “Bezels are milled with multiple planes. They are complex 3D surfaces,” he says. “I don’t know of anyone in the UK who is manufacturing bezels in the same quantity as we are.”
His own timepiece of choice is a ALT1-WT World Timer, a pilot’s watch that even Bremont describes as “wonderfully over-engineered”. “More is more for me,” Parker laughs. He is similarly maximalist in terms of his own role, with an ambition to “make everything ourselves” as the company continues to grow – and to revive a preFirst World War tradition of British watchmaking. “We are manufacturing things now that people said we couldn’t do. It just takes time and effort to develop that expertise.”
That adventure continues, and it’s keeping perfect time.