Double the benefit: Frodsham's miracle of English watchmaking, 13 years in the making

When the English firm Charles Frodsham & Co started work on its first ever wristwatch

13 years ago, the idea of “British watchmaking” was the very definition of an oxymoron.  

Back in 2005, Bremont was in its infancy; on the Isle of Man, Roger W. Smith was just emerging from the shadow of the master, Dr George Daniels; and present players such as Norfolk-based Garrick and husband-and-wife team Struthers were not even a dream. Even less helpfully, many of the best-known names in British watchmaking history had long ago been snapped up by Swiss companies – the idea of a contemporary wristwatch produced under a notable English name was already old hat.

Happily enough, Philip Whyte and Richard Stenning, the two owners of Charles Frodsham & Co – a company that has been in continual operation since its founding in 1834 (descendant Simon Frodsham is also a director) – remain entirely content to let the watch do the talking. And for the horologically minded, it’s a timepiece that has plenty to say.

It has emerged from a milieu that includes two of the finest British watchmakers ever to practise, and builds on an idea that the great Abraham-Louis Breguet had once tried to perfect. It is a testament to the masterful work and talent of Whyte, Stenning and the team they assembled at their workshop in East Sussex.

The Double Impulse Chronometer is an answer to a question that’s been troubling watchmakers for centuries. How do you design a geometry for the escapement (the mechanism that governs the swing of the balance with precise impulses) that can function without needing oil lubrication?

Given that oil eventually degrades, it’s a fundamental problem. Breguet tackled it with his échappement naturel, which used two geared escape wheels rather than one, though he found it unsatisfactory.

Others would take it up, including Frodsham and, in the modern era, English luminaries Dr George Daniels (1926-2011) and Derek Pratt (1938-2009). Daniels built on Breguet’s ideas with his Independent Double Wheel escapement, but didn’t think it could be shrunk to wristwatch size. He found an alternative solution, which eventually became the revolutionary Co-Axial mechanism that Omega now uses.

However Pratt, his close friend, thought Daniels’s original solution could be made to work for a wristwatch, and inspired Whyte and Stenning to pursue this. After three years of R&D work, the first prototype emerged a full decade ago.

These ideas are realised at last in an £82,200 chronometer watch that’s a synthesis of tradition, craft, technology and design. While the watch is traditional in concept and form, it uses the materials and techniques that were best for the job, whether that’s tungsten carbide for the adjustable weights on the balance, titanium for the detent, or the 18ct rose-gold wheels.

Charles Frodsham & Co is planning to produce batches of 10 to 12 watches per year, with each part subjected to extensive hand-finishing, from the graining of the gold wheels and the black-polishing of the pinions and balance bridge, to the frosting of the plates and winding wheels.

That the movement is a pleasure to look at is a by-product of the Double Impulse mechanism itself, with symmetry provided by its two gear trains impulsing a massive, slow-running 13.5mm balance.

The dial is equally crisply finished and surprisingly technical. It was made from zirconium ceramic, chosen for its superior durability as well as its ability to take much finer detail. The minute track, for example, is applied by vapour deposition of a metal oxide, allowing details down to 13 microns wide to be resolved.

The development of the watch occurred around the company’s other work, which includes the conservation and restoration of high-grade clocks, watches, chronometers and scientific instruments, and research and acquisitions for collectors. There have also been larger commissions, including another inherited Pratt legacy: the task of completing his replica of John Harrison’s legendary H4. A version of the H3 was also made, as well as a clock commissioned for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.  

It’s a fitting tribute that in April the firm was awarded the Derek Pratt Prize from the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers for the Double Impulse Chronometer.

Given for “innovation, ingenuity, elegance, the highest standards of workmanship and precision performance in the craft and science of time and timekeeping”, the accolade really says it all.