A Watch Story

Founded in 2005 by brothers Nick and Giles English, the Bremont watch company was a true labor of passion.

The story begins with a tragedy, however.

 Life for Nick & Giles English changed significantly one clear day in March 1995. Nick was practicing for an air display with their father Euan. But the 1942 WWII Harvard aircraft they were flying was involved in an accident. Giles, waiting to take off for the next sortie was told that his father had been killed. His brother had broken over 30 bones and probably wouldn't make it.

Six months later, however, Nick was back in the air and being flown by Giles. But things would never be the same again. Life was too short to waste. The two brothers decided to pursue what they enjoyed most: a life crafting beautifully engineered mechanical devices.

When they weren't flying old aircraft, Nick & Giles had spent most of their childhood making and restoring things in the workshop of their gifted father - an ex-RAF pilot with a PHD in Aeronautical Engineering. They even helped him to build an aircraft they still fly to this day. Euan was also passionate about mechanical timepieces. He would often bring home an old clock from an auction for the brothers to try and get going again. 

Their very English surname may have been perfect for a British watch but instead they opted for a very French name.  The story behind that is compelling.

 Having landed their 1930s German bi-plane in this farmer`s field during a heavy storm, the farmer came out and seeing the problem, offered the brothers a barn for their aircraft and beds for the night. Luckily for the Englishes, this 78-year-old was a former engineer with a passion for planes, clocks and watches. Sound familiar?

Michael Hayman:  But let’s go back to a farmer’s field. This is where the brand was born, wasn’t it? In France.

Nick English: It was. My point was we didn’t want to buy a brand. So when we set up Bremont, the first five years we didn’t have a watch brand. It didn’t have a name, and it wasn’t important to us, because it was all about getting the watch right. But then it got to a stage when I said, ‘Right, Giles, we’ve really got to come up with a name for this brand.’ And our surname is English. So having a British watch named after you, hard to trademark, and the irony has been lost on many.

It actually came down to a trip two years after my accident with my father. My brother got me back in the airplane quite quickly and we were doing another trip down through France, much to my mother’s dismay. And we had a, I’d say, precautionary landing in a farmer’s field in France.

We took off with far too little fuel. That’s not true. We took off with the right amount of

fuel, but we couldn’t find where we were going. And we ended up landing in this farmer’s field. And if you do that in UK or America, you apologize to farmer and buy him a bottle of whiskey, and take his wife for a flight.

 But in France, it’s very bureaucratic, and it’s illegal. So you land there and the whole airplane gets impounded. And we knew this at the time when we landed, but we just thought, actually, it’s better to be alive.

And we landed it was pissing with rain, which is sort of indication of why we shouldn’t have been flying in the first place. This farmer came out and we thought, “Oh my gosh, this is going to be hard work.” Giles, in the meantime, was hitchhiking to get some fuel with a rather good looking French girl. And I was sort of left confronting this farmer. And I thought, “This is going to be tricky.” 

And he just said, “Look, put your airplane in my hangar,” well it was a barn, “until the weather clears, and come and have a cup of tea.” So we did that, pushed it in, and we ended up staying with him for two or three nights. And had our father lived for another 30 years, he would have been very much like this guy.

 This guy had a workshop. He was tinkering the whole time. He used to fly himself. And we stayed in touch until his death. I mean, he’s 78 years old at the time.

Michael Hayman: And what was his name?

Nick English: Antoine Bremont.