NORWICH SCHOOL LAUNCHES EXCLUSIVE WATCH FOR OUR COMMUNITY

March 9, 2023

Norwich School is delighted to launch a bespoke watch exclusively designed by an ON for ONs. Rachel Lightfoot, Development Manager, tells us more...



"In October 2022 Giles opened Bremont HQ in Henley on Thames to the ON Society for a tour of their HQ and now with 20 years of British watch making under their belts we are delighted to launch this Bremont ON watch to our NS community.


We share with you the finished design of our exclusive Bremont ON watch. I hope you will agree that ON Giles English (88-92) has created a classic ON dress watch we will love for years to come.

This limited production BREMONT AIRCO ON watch is available exclusively to ONs (Old Norvicensians). I am also delighted to tell you that a small donation per watch sold will go towards bursaries, gifting a transformational Norwich School education to a future ON.


You will see that our Bremont ON watch has some rather tasteful features. Please look closely... on the face you will find the subtle NS houses around the edge, BREMONT ON & the year the school was founded in 1096.

And on the rather beautiful open case back of the watch, you will find Norwich School. And a place for an engraving of your choice where you can personalise the watch for you."

To find out more or to place your order please get in touch: rlightfoot@norwich-school.org.uk or 01603 728431.

 

ABOUT BREMONT

Bremont is an award-winning British luxury watch brand, manufacturing mechanical watches in Henley-on-Thames, England. Bremont is making considerable investment with its UK watch making and manufacturing and in 2021 opened The Bremont Manufacturing & Technology Centre, a new state-of-the-art 35,000 sq ft purpose-built mechanical watch manufacturing centre enabling the full machining and manufacturing of Bremont’s watches.

Co-Founded by brothers Nick & Giles English (ON: 88-92) in 2002, Bremont has made a substantial impact on the watch making industry in a very short period of time. The brand remains true to its original principles of: aviation and military, British engineering and adventure. As well as manufacturing watches for some of the most exclusive military squadrons around the world, Bremont continues to play an influential role in revitalising the British watch industry, the birthplace of numerous timekeeping innovations still used today. The brand is now in the top handful of chronometer producers in the world. www.bremont.com

 

Nick and Giles English Biographies


Nick English

Nick English, born and raised in Cambridge, graduated with a First in Geography from Manchester University in 1993. During his teen years, he spent many hours flying and displaying historic aircraft with his father, Euan, and his brother, Giles. He also flew with the RAF as an undergraduate.


Nick qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers in 1996 and then went on to work at Henry Ansbacher, a corporate finance boutique. These years were interrupted by a horrific vintage plane crash in 1995 where, whilst practicing for an air-display, his father, Euan, died and Nick broke over 25 bones. This was a tipping point in Nick and his brother’s lives. They left the City in 1997 to restore and maintain historic aircraft in a business their father had set up as a hobby.


Whilst surrounded by these historic aircraft, Nick and Giles set up a secure digital media distribution business in 1999 called Virtue Broadcasting Plc, which they took public in 2001.


It was in 2002 that Nick and Giles decided to pursue one of the main passions in their lives – mechanical watches. Fully appreciative of the role Great Britain had played in the evolution of horology over the centuries, they set out to re-establish the British watchmaking industry and so The Bremont Watch Company was born. The watches, all of which were chronometers, took five years of development and in July 2007 their first watches were sold in the UK.

Having since moved to ‘The Wing’ in Henley-on-Thames – a state-of-the-art manufacturing and technology facility which opened in 2021, Bremont have brought horological manufacturing back to Britain on a scale not seen since the 1970s. Today, The Wing has enabled the brand to grow production exponentially and launch its first manufactured movement series The ENG 300.


Bremont watches are now sold all over the world through Bremont’s own brand boutiques, online and a significant wholesale network. The brand has won numerous awards and prides itself on manufacturing watches on British shores.


Nick lives with his wife and three children near Henley-on-Thames.

 

Giles English (88-92)

Giles English grew up in and around aviation and inherited both this passion and the love of engineering from his father. Unsurprisingly, he then went on to read General Engineering and Naval Architecture at Southampton University. As a post-grad he joined Williams de Broë Corporate Finance, advising them on IPOs for engineering businesses.


In 1995, Giles’ life changed drastically after he witnessed his father and brother suffer a terrible plane crash; his father died but his brother Nick survived against all odds. Upon Nick’s recovery, Giles made the decision to leave corporate finance and, with his brother, went to rescue North Weald Flying Services: an Essex-based family business restoring historical aircraft.


It was here that Nick and Giles realised they worked well as a team and started to formulate a plan to launch Bremont – a British watch making business built around their love of engineering, developed from a family love of horology passed down through generations. Knowing this was going to be a long and costly process, Nick and Giles raised funds by starting a business pioneering audio and video on the internet; Virtue Broadcasting listed on the Stock Exchange in 2000 and, at the time, Giles was the youngest Director on the UK Stock Exchange.


Bremont was founded in 2002 with Giles and Nick as founding shareholders, but it was not until 2007 that the first watches were available to buy, having spent five years in development. The brothers had to mortgage their houses and commit everything to a business that everyone thought was impossible.


Passion, dedication and a will to succeed have grown Bremont to be a top 10 chronometer producer worldwide, with retail coverage spanning four continents. In 2022, the business launched its first movement series to be manufactured in the UK – the ENG300 series – facilitated by the move to The Wing, Bremont’s Manufacturing & Technology Centre in Henley-on-Thames.


With Giles and Nick’s unique approach to product and marketing, they have built a strong business in a very crowded market, returning watchmaking at scale to Britain after half a century of absence.

In 2013 Giles was himself in a serious aeroplane crash when his 1930s Gipsy Moth suffered engine failure mid-flight. On forced landing, Giles broke his back in multiple places, but has fortunately gone on to make a full recovery. His enthusiasm for life is stronger than ever.


Giles lives with his wife and three daughters in Northamptonshire.

Tom Little KC, ON 82-91, Returns to Norwich School

By Sonja Mitchell • September 26, 2025
We are very grateful to Tom Little for being our guest speaker at Prizegiving this year.

Professor Charles Forsdick, ON 78-87, on the Role of Languages to Build a Better World.

By Sonja Mitchell • September 26, 2025
We were delighted to hear Professor Charles Forsdick speak about the importance of languages in society at a recent Norfolk Cambridge Society lecture at Norwich School.

Girls Mentorship Programme Returns for New Academic Year

September 24, 2025
The school's first female peer-mentoring meeting of the academic year brought together fourth form students with sixth form mentors in an initiative designed to promote sisterhood and establish a strong sense of community within our female cohorts. During the session, younger students shared their academic and personal goals for the year in small discussion groups, with sixth form mentors offering guidance and encouragement drawn from their own experiences. The collaborative atmosphere allowed students to explore practical strategies for achieving their aspirations while building meaningful cross-year relationships. The session concluded with discussions surrounding the name of the programme, with students proposing to honour an inspirational woman who holds significance for them. This programme aims to foster positive female role models within the school while empowering students to support one another's growth and success. Regular meetings throughout the year will continue and this initiative represents the school's ongoing commitment to developing confident and brave young women.

Pupils from the Friedrich-Leopold-Woeste-Gymnasium Visit the Close

By Eleanor Lewis • September 22, 2025
On Monday 15 and Tuesday 16 September, 28 pupils from the Friedrich-Leopold-Woeste-Gymnasium visited Norwich School as part of their Languages trip to Norwich. On Monday, they were treated to a tour of the school in German by our U5 GCSE class and on Tuesday, the two classes were excited to see each other again and spent the afternoon speaking German and English to each other at a Language cafe in UKS, where they ended the afternoon by playing board games together. The pupils enjoyed getting to know each other and speaking each other's languages. They will keep in contact privately now that the German group has departed. Quotes from pupils are as follows: 'We were laughing with them the whole time!' 'We made some strong connections with them and will talk with them online' 'It was very nice to meet them and make some new friends!' 'It was very enjoyable and a lovely opportunity to practise our German and make new friends.' 'It was nice to meet and talk to them while practising our German.' 'We went to the city with them and loved it!' 'We learnt so much about their home in Germany.'

On the Front of the Book - An Assembly from Rev Child

By Eleanor Lewis • September 19, 2025
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:25-27) There’s a saying that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Years ago I met someone who doesn’t like that saying very much. That’s because his job is to design book covers. I watched him lead a really interesting seminar where he showed us some of his designs. He explained how his artwork was trying to sum up – on just one piece of laminated, folded paper - the message and themes of all the other pages in the book. Just occasionally, some book covers do this by choosing a key phrase from the book and putting it in large letters on the front. A famous example is Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, where some editions had a cover that read: ‘Big Brother is Watching You’. If you know the story then you’ll recognise that as the sinister propaganda message that no-one can get away from. Some copies of the Lord of the Rings had printed on the front ‘One ring to rule them all’. And The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams had just two words on the cover of some editions – ‘DON’T PANIC’. It begins to make sense when you discover that some of the characters in the story are using a space travel guide (the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) which is designed to help you through any difficult situation. And what makes the guide so successful and popular is that its first principle is on the front cover. Whatever happens – DON’T PANIC. Have a look at the cover of your hymn book for a moment. What do you think? We’ve gone for a pretty classic look. The name of our school in gold embossed lettering, and the school crest complete with a motto in Latin for a classy finish. Sometimes I wonder – entirely hypothetically – how we might redesign the cover. If you were going to put a few words on the front, one essential message that everyone in the school was going to see at the beginning of every day, what would it be? Here are a few suggestions I got from people around the school, some more serious than others: · “Show Love” · “Shine Bright!” · “Treat others as you would like to be treated” · “Do some work in your study periods” · “Wake Up!” Actually, I think the words ‘DON’T PANIC’ might work here too. I hope you’re realising, now that we’re a few weeks into term, that panicking is never worth it – and if you’re tempted to panic then sharing your problem and talking to someone almost always helps. Maybe that would be good to remember at the start of the school day. This also reminds me of one of my favourite passages from the Bible, the words of Jesus we heard just now: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? … Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”  I’ve had times myself where those words from the Sermon on the Mount have given me some perspective. Perhaps part of that passage would work well on the front of our hymn books – that wouldn’t be a bad thing to keep remembering. We’re not about to reissue the school hymn books with a new cover any time soon. But there’s nothing stopping you imagining a message on the front of the hymn book – whatever you need that message to be. “Don’t panic.” “Do not worry.” “Show love.” Why not have a few helpful words in your mind’s eye every time you pick up these blue books in the morning?

Air Raid Shelter Open to Visitors

By Sonja Mitchell • September 19, 2025
As part of Heritage Open Days we were delighted to open the Air Raid Shelter and Norwich School Chapel to visitors this month.

Contemporary Arts group Entranced by Collaborative Artists in Blake Studio

By Eleanor Lewis • September 18, 2025
Creative Arts are strongly supported at Norwich School, and this was very much in evidence with the return to site of the well-respected local Creative Arts group, the Norfolk Contemporary Art Society (n-cas). For many years we have hosted their ground-breaking talks in the Blake Studio, and we were delighted to welcome them back on 18 September 2025. Our talk was introduced by Lisa Newby, recently appointed Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Norfolk Museums, based at the Castle. She introduced us to Essex-based multimedia artists Daniel & Clara . Since meeting in 2010, the pair have dedicated themselves to a shared life of creative experimentation, working across moving image, photography, performance and ‘mail-art’ to explore the nature of human experience, the natural world and our perception of reality. With work recently on display at Norwich Castle Museum, this was a welcome trip to Norfolk for them and one which saw them entertain an audience of pupils, staff, alumni, n-cas members and local creatives with a visually arresting talk, including some striking images and poetic prose accompaniment. Of great interest were the selection of their short films that showcased their love of the natural world through landscapes, intriguingly crafted taxidermy imagery and appealing sound archives. In the ensuing Q&A the audience seemed very taken by their reflections on how up-and-coming creative artists, such as themselves, have to work hard to earn a living through constant innovation and multimedia versatility. Working with Norwich Castle and commissions from n-cas were undoubted highlights, readily acknowledged by Daniel & Clara. N-cas host regular talks at Norwich School. Their next talk is on 14 October – see: The Mike Toll Film Archive - three short films featuring David Jones, Michael Chapman and Oliver Creed — ncas . All those interested in the creative ats are welcome.  The next talk on site in our culturally enriching series of lectures with partner organisations sees the welcome return on 07 October of the Royal Geographical Society. Major General (Retired) Rob Thomson CBE DSO of The HALO Trust, the world’s largest mine-clearing NGO, will discuss how a changing geopolitical order marked by great power competition, increased conflict, and the retreat of multi-lateralism is affecting human development and security. See: Clearing a path through the new world disorder . All those interested in the natural world and geopolitics are very welcome.

Lower 2 Experience Stone Age Life!

By Eleanor Lewis • September 12, 2025
Lower Twos had a wonderful Stone Age Day, immersing themselves in activities such as tool-making, fishing techniques, and learning about the hides. They built a fire, cooked fish over it, which they all then tried, and some even bravely tried the eyeballs! Using tools and instruments made from bone, the children thoroughly enjoyed the experience and are eager to continue exploring this era in their Topic lessons throughout the Michaelmas term.

The role of languages to build a better world – the scintillating return of the Norfolk Cambridge Society to Norwich School

By Eleanor Lewis • September 11, 2025
Norwich School has an established tradition of working with partner organisations to host high-quality lectures on our site. We are particularly proud of our links with the prestigious Norfolk Cambridge Society, whose long-running series of 23 lectures has been amazing. The 24 th public lecture took place in the Blake Studio on 11 September 2025 in front of a capacity audience comprising school pupils, parents, staff, alumni, and interested members of the city’s intelligentsia. It was of particular interest to the Norwich School community that the speaker was one of our own: Old Norvicensian Professor Charles Forsdick , Drapers Professor of French at the University of Cambridge and Lead Fellow for Languages at the British Academy. He has published widely on travel writing, colonial history and literature, penal culture and slavery, all reflective of his lifelong humanitarianism. His topic was “The Role of Language Skills in Building a Better World“ in which he discussed the growing importance of language skills in an increasingly complex and dangerous world. Charles is well known as an academic of great insight and erudition, combined with natural talent as a brilliant communicator, a lively sense of humour and a profound social conscience. His love of languages has firm roots in the teaching he received at Norwich School. Indeed, his hometown of East Dereham featured prominently in his talk, and his links to the school and to Norfolk remain strong, Following his talk and over refreshments a lively debate continued, discussing a wide variety of thorny issues brought up in his talk. These included the short-sightedness of monolingualism, the value of languages to improving vaccine take-up during the pandemic, our woeful language proficiency versus our European neighbours and challenges with current grade boundaries in language A Levels. It was a pleasure welcoming the Norfolk Cambridge Society and an illustrious speaker of such calibre on site for such a compelling event. We greatly look forward to next term’s lecture to take place on 5 February 2025: How AI Works and How it will Transform our Lives given by Neil Lawrence , DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge, Senior AI Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute and Visiting Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Sheffield. Booking is now open, and tickets are selling fast. See this link: Lecture: How AI Works and How it will Transform our Lives – Norfolk Cambridge Society . - Jonathan Pearson, Development Director ( jpearson@norwich-school.org.uk )

An Impressive Musical Theatre Workshop with a Trip to The Midnight Bell

By Eleanor Lewis • September 11, 2025
Middle 5 pupil, Antonia Christophi, tells us all about the dance workshop and theatre trip that took place earlier this term. On Thursday 11 September M5 and L5 pupils who had an interest in dance and musical theatre had the privilege of receiving a musical theatre workshop. This was run by Lauren she was an excellent instructor with a high level of energy that kept all of us going after a long hard-working day at school. Lauren taught us a dance from the musical ‘The Wild Party’ using the song ‘A Wild, Wild Party’. The workshop though challenging it was also an enjoyable and uplifting way to end the school day. After our workshop Miss How and Miss Smith took us all to watch the amazing dance production of The Midnight Bell, produced and choregraphed by Matthew Bourne through his company new adventures. The production of The Midnight Bell was a modern ballet inspired on the novel written by Partick Hamilton. This production was set in late 1920s in Soho and Fitzrovia London which presents the tale of several interconnected characters who are either employees or regulars at the pub ‘The Midnight Bell’. This production had an extraordinary representation of schizophrenia and other challenges that was civilians were faced with at the time; such as prostitution and homophobia. This was represented with the regulars at the pub displaying the secretiveness and hurt being attracted to those of the same gender would bring at that age period or how prostitution meant having to give your self away to keep living though other women would look down on you and men would never see you. This production was truly a life changing insight on how many people lived without being accepted or not wondering what is your consciousness or real life whilst all being communicated through precise and graceful movements that can express more than words could define. These agile movements inspired many of Norwich Schools young dancers to use more emotion to communicate through our dance.
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