Camden Watch Company’s new timepiece is inspired by one of London’s wildest duels

The Camden Watch Company, the British independent label created by wife-and-husband team Anneke Short and Jerome Robert, has unveiled a new timepiece with a backstory so dramatic it feels tailor-made for the borough’s mythology.

Long before they were designing some of the most recognisable watches in London, the pair were just two creatives living off Randolph Street and spending plenty of hours in their local, The Colonel Fawcett. Naturally, curiosity kicked in. Who was the man staring down from the walls? And why was his name attached to their most-visited pub?

The answer, they soon learned, was peak 19th-century Camden: Lieutenant-Colonel David Fawcett, fresh from service in China, returned home in 1843 to find himself locked in a furious dispute with his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Alexander Monroe.

Property disagreements escalated, egos inflated, and the pair settled things the Victorian way, by arranging a duel at dawn just outside Camden Town. One shot fired, Fawcett fell, and when a constable arrived to investigate, the Colonel reportedly snapped back: “What is it to you?! It’s an accident.” It absolutely wasn’t.

After being denied entry at one tavern, he was taken to the Camden Arms, where he died the next morning. The scandal became part of the push to condemn duelling entirely, and in 2011, the pub was renamed The Colonel Fawcett in his honour, or at least in memory of his extremely chaotic final 24 hours. It was only a matter of time before Anneke and Jerome channelled this story into a design of their own.

The result is the No.253 1843 Edition, a quietly theatrical tribute that folds the entire tale into its details. They’ve used their most intricate case style and borrowed inspiration from the ornate paisley-style engravings found on antique duelling pistols, echoed on the dial and the case side, which has been finished in an antique gun-metal tone for that “found in a Camden attic” energy.

Look closely and “1843” is hidden in the dial typography; flip it over and two crossed pistols sit engraved on the case back, a discreet nod to the shot that cemented the Colonel in local folklore.

Built with a polished black ion-plated 41mm stainless steel case and gun-metal detailing, the watch comes on your choice of black, tan or brown leather strap, or a metal bracelet if you want something with extra Victorian-gentleman heft. And because no Camden story is complete without a drink at the end of it, every watch purchased for a limited time comes with a voucher for a free pint at The Colonel Fawcett itself, the perfect place to toast the borough’s most notorious duel.

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