Our Story
Written by Mark Warman
Origins
This fine, upstanding gentleman is my Great Grandfather, William.
Born in Cardiff, he worked as a grocer’s assistant and an insurance agent. He then moved to Birmingham and worked as a carpenter before running the business in the years leading up to WW1. When William decided to sign up for the war effort, every member of his team followed. Pictured here before he shipped out, he was ultimately shot and killed on the 21st of August 1915 during the Chocolate Hill advance at Gallipoli.
His photograph was the spark that ignited my obsession with military jackets. When I started looking into the idea of launching a clothing line, my mind kept coming back to this image. I started researching WW1 uniforms and almost immediately, I found a black and white photograph of a British officer sat astride a motorcycle, speaking to a man balancing himself on two wooden canes.
The officer was T.E. Lawrence. Otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia, his story was popularised by the 1962 movie of the same name which dramatises some of his time in the Middle East, primarily in Saudi Arabia.
Connections
The other man was George Brough, who was recovering from a motorcycle accident at the time. Up until 1940, Brough built bikes that were dubbed the “Rolls Royce of motorcycles” due to the build quality and his attention to detail. Lawrence was a huge fan, buying seven Brough Superiors before his death in 1935.
The more I learnt about Lawrence, the more his story became an important part of mine.
I was born and grew up in Bahrain, an island that sits just off the Eastern coast of Saudi, the country where Lawrence made his name. Brough built his bikes on Nottingham's Haydn Road, just over 10 miles west of Barnfield HQ.
Commitment
Brough Superior was never a big company, over the course of 21 years they produced 3048 bikes. That's an average of just 145 a year. But they were and still are, incredibly influential.
I have no interest in creating a large company, producing hundreds of styles and pumping out low quality at high quantities. I want to be proud of every single piece of clothing that we produce and for me, the only way to do that is to focus on quality and attention to detail.
What I’m building is measured in craft, not volume. A limited number of garments each year, made in England, carried for decades by men who know the worth of owning fewer but better.
