History in the making
Bremont’s new Longitude watch is a tribute to British timekeeping.
The latest of Bremont’s limited-edition watches follows a template long familiar to observers of the British firm, in which fragments from something historical and suitably inspiring are built into the watch. Previous examples include oak from HMS Victory and metal from an Enigma machine. Now Bremont has aligned itself with the cynosure of British horological prestige: the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. Unveiled earlier this week at the site, the watch is called the Longitude and its slice of physical history is a brass ring encircling the movement – sourced from the meridian line installed by John Flamsteed, whose calculations established Greenwich Mean Time in the 1670s.
Another Greenwich reference is found on the dial. The red circular power reserve indication is inspired by the Time Ball atop the Observatory, which drops each day at 12pm. As the watch’s mainspring runs down, the circle drains from red to white.
“We’re trying to tell the world the story of British watchmaking and, of course, the Observatory wants to tell that story too,” says Giles English, who co-founded Bremont with his brother Nick in 2002. “When you go around parts of the world, it’s as if Britain has never built a watch before. We need to keep ramming the message home.”
Most importantly, the Longitude shows how Bremont’s own role in that story is finally taking shape. The automatic movement ringed by Flamsteed’s meridian brass is, the English brothers believe, Bremont’s game-changer. Named the ENG300, the majority of it (by weight) has been manufactured in the workshops at The Wing, the multi-million-pound HQ Bremont opened in Henley this summer.
With a silicon escapement, screwadjusted balance and capacity for functions including a big date and indicator for the 65 hours of power reserve, it’s a higher-spec engine than the industry-standard movements Bremont has hitherto relied on, and it is designed to go into existing core collection watches. The company hopes to be assembling 5,000 ENG300 movements next year.
“We just believe it’s a bloody good movement,” says English. “We can build it, we can service it easily without increased service costs, we can guarantee parts for it – it’s designed for what we need.”
Industrialised watch manufacturing in the UK has long been Bremont’s ambition, but progress has at times seemed tortuous. A movement that has been in gestation since 2015 has yet to launch after proving too costly to produce at the scale required, but it will be used for special collector watches.
Bremont found its solution in THE+, an independent Swiss outfit that developed a specialised calibre, the K1, launched by the independent brand Horage in 2017. It’s on this
‘We’re trying to tell the world the story of British watchmaking and the Observatory wants to tell that story too’
that the ENG300 is based, Bremont having acquired the rights to manufacture the movement, as well as the intellectual property (IP), enabling it to make (and own exclusively) any changes it likes; according to Bremont, 80 per cent is customised to its specifications.
But IP is nothing without the means to industrialisation, which has come with a £20 million price tag so far. “As a business, we should be two to three times the size to justify this investment, but we have to make it up front,” says English. The business case, according to the brothers, is principally one of control: over parts, supply chains, quality and servicing, without affecting the value offer to the customer. Core watches containing the ENG300 will be only marginally more expensive, though the Longitude editions (150 in steel, 75 each in white gold and rose gold) are priced much higher.
“In the short term it’s deeply unprofitable for us, and will be for the next few years, but we’re trying to build something for 20 years’ time,” says Giles. “Ultimately, this is the bit Nick and I enjoy: manufacturing in the UK at scale. There’s a beauty and romance to that.”
It’s why, Nick and Giles point out, a tie-in with Greenwich now feels so appropriate. “If you had to come up with one global geographical location associated with being at the centre of time, it would be Greenwich,” says Nick. “A formal association with such an important institution, at a time when we feel we are putting the UK back on the global horological stage, is a real honour for us.”