David Brailsford and Craig Baird founded Garrick in Norfolk, England in 2014 with an unusually ambitious commercial proposition for a British indie: produce mechanical watches with significant in-house-machined components from the Norfolk workshop, including hand-engine-turned guilloché dials, hand-finished bridges, and proprietary balance assemblies. The vast majority of British indie brands at this scale are essentially design-and-assembly operations using outsourced Swiss or Japanese components; Garrick is one of the very few small British operations actually machining significant mechanical components in the UK.
The first reference, the S1, launched in 2014/2015 as a 42mm steel watch with hand-finished UT-G02 movement (built on a UTZ caliber base with extensive Garrick modifications and finishing), and a hand-engine-turned guilloché dial produced in the Norfolk workshop. The brand's signature is the visible British craft: the engine-turning is performed on the brand's own rose engines, the dial finishing is hand-applied, and the movement modifications are visible through the sapphire caseback. Subsequent references extended the catalogue: the S2, the S6 (with more elaborate movement work), and the Portsmouth (a maritime-themed reference).
Today Garrick operates from the original Norfolk workshop with a small team handling design, machining, finishing, and assembly. Annual production is small (estimated low hundreds of pieces) and pricing spans GBP 5,500-15,000+ across the catalogue. The brand has built a strong reputation among collectors of British-made horology specifically for the visible component-level British craft - in a category where many British 'manufacture' claims are looser than the name suggests, Garrick's actual machining operation gives the brand unusual credibility. Garrick is independent and remains under Brailsford-Baird ownership.
