From Harold Pinchbeck to Pinchbeck

If you've spent any time looking closely at our watches, you might have noticed something slightly confusing.

Some of them carry the name Harold Pinchbeck. Others simply say Pinchbeck.

Both are us.

The story starts with Paul's grandfather, Harold. In the early 1920s, after leaving the army, he bought a watch and clockmaker's shop in Barton upon Humber. The shop had already been trading for many years, and Harold took it on with his wife, living above the premises while he repaired watches and clocks. It became the family business. When Paul's father Dennis joined him, the name changed to H Pinchbeck and Son.

It is easy to look at that history and imagine a straight line from then to now. It wasn't quite like that.

The original shop eventually closed, and Paul went on to build a life and career away from watchmaking. His interest in clocks never really disappeared, though. The old family home was full of clocks and watches, and he became fascinated by how they worked. Years later, a conversation with Jason brought the idea of returning to watches back into focus. In 2006, they started the business again, bringing the Harold Pinchbeck name with them. For a while, the watches were Harold Pinchbeck watches. And then, gradually, they became Pinchbeck.

It wasn't about leaving Harold behind. It was simply that the business had become something of its own.

Jason was developing the designs. Paul was building the business. Rob joined the team and the idea of assembling British watches in Lincoln began to take shape. The name Pinchbeck started to mean more than the family history it had come from. It became the name of the watches we were making and the business we were building.

That's why we haven't taken Harold away completely.

You'll still find the old emblem on some of our watches. We like that it is there. It isn't trying to tell you that the watch was made in the 1920s, or that we're still running the shop Harold ran. It is simply a little piece of history carried forward. A marker. This is where we came from.

The registered business still carries the full Harold Pinchbeck name too. It's our family name and, in its own way, the name of the family shop that started all of this.

But Pinchbeck is the name we use now.

It is on the website. It is on the workshop door. It is on the watches Jason designs and Rob assembles. It is the name customers know and the name we have built the business around.

There is something quite nice about having both.

Harold Pinchbeck reminds us that this didn't start with us.

Pinchbeck is what we've made of it since.