It’s Coming Home
Few places feel more British than Henley-on-Thames, a chocolate-box town just west of London, where pints and Pimms are sipped on the riverbank. It’s nice. Even in this anxious era, Henley feels like an open-air museum of better times – when British morale, and manufacturing, flourished.
Bremont, a native son of British watchmaking, is part of that history. The demise of our national watch industry, once a world-beater, can be traced to the change in priorities during the Second World War. Factories made munitions, not movements. Switzerland’s ensuing dominance
(for obvious reasons, it had been able to maintain its horological output) was inevitable. But Bremont, the brainchild of co-founders and brothers Nick and Giles English (as apt a surname as there ever was), is in the vanguard of the rebirth of watchmaking on these shores.
A ‘made in Britain’ stamp isn’t easy to attain, though. As Switzerland is still the biggest exporter of fine watches, Bremont has manufactured most of its wares there. Until now, anyway. In Henley, the marque has begun the arduous process of crafting watches in its home town, in a brand-new home, christened The Wing. ‘Our vision was always to house all our teams under one roof in a modern environment, so that every individual had access to one another, from watchmakers through to machine engineers,’ says Nick English. ‘To create a state-of-the-art watch manufacturer in the heart of the UK has realised that dream.’
The building, a striking crescent moon of glass and stainless steel, was designed to stand apart from those on the continent. ‘It’s much more than an industrial site, which you can often see in the Jura valley,’ says English. ‘We’re in a unique position, in having not inherited any legacy buildings or attitudes. We had an inclusive vision for The Wing.’
And the goal of British-made movements is within sight. ‘If it was easy, every brand would try it. Swiss manufacturers have the advantage of long-term partnerships,’ says English. ‘We don’t have the industry set-up here. A company must manufacture more itself. This is where we now sit as a brand.’
In a United Kingdom that can feel somewhat weary, Bremont is parting the clouds above Henley. ‘With supplier lead times, shipping costs, potential quality challenges and an untapped potential in an incredible engineering skill set, I can’t see a better time than now to invest in UK manufacturing,’ says English. ‘We have some of the best engineering minds in the world, right here.’ bremont.com
National pride abounds in the house that Bremont built, bringing horology back to British shores ‘If it was easy, every brand would try it’