About Us · Family Pedigree
Engineering, ships, motor cars and flight.
The story behind Finer International reaches back to the first days of steam.
Seafaring, property, shipbuilding, pharmacy, engineering, mining, motor cars, aviation and music are firmly ensconced in the family DNA.
1476 – 1529 · Ships · The Bartons of Leith
Admiral Sir Andrew de BartonFounder of the Royal Scottish Navy
The family’s connection with ships goes back to the Bartons of Leith, Edinburgh, ship owners and sea captains in the late fifteenth century. John Barton sailed under James III and was killed by the Portuguese in 1476. His sons were at the heart of James IV’s new Royal Scottish Navy. Sir Andrew Barton, the king’s admiral, was killed in 1511 fighting Sir Thomas and Sir Edward Howard in the Downs. His brother Sir Robert Barton of Over Barnton was master of the Great Michael, launched in 1511, the largest warship in Europe, and later became Lord High Treasurer of Scotland.
Three and a half centuries later the family were building ships again, on the Clyde with Charles Randolph.
1820s · Property
Building Belgravia
On James’s father’s side, the Seth Smith family were among the developers who created London’s West End. Seth Smith (1791–1860), working alongside Thomas Cubitt and the Cundy brothers, developed large parts of Belgravia and Mayfair from the 1820s, including homes on Eaton Square and Eaton Place and the Pantechnicon on Motcomb Street — the building that gave its name to the removal van.
Property development has run through the family ever since. James spent twenty-five years developing property in London from 1993, and continues today at Chapel House Farm in the Cotswolds.
1840s · Early history
The age of steam
The family’s engineering story begins at the very start of the steam age, in the 1840s, when engines first began to move people as well as machines.
1852 · Shipbuilding
Randolph, Elder & Co, Glasgow
Charles Randolph (1809–1878), who married into the family, trained as a millwright and engineer and founded his own works in Glasgow in 1834. When John Elder joined him as a partner in 1852, Randolph, Elder & Co turned to marine engines — and by Randolph’s retirement in 1868 had built 111 engines, 106 ships and three floating docks. The yard went on to become the famous Fairfield shipyard on the Clyde.
On his death Randolph left £60,000 to the University of Glasgow, around £6.5 million today, to complete the Bute and Randolph Halls.
1872 · Engineering
Horseless carriages
By 1872 the family were designing steam engines for horseless carriages.
Charles Randolph’s steam carriage, built in Glasgow in 1872, appears in The Complete Motorist, one of the first books published on the history of motoring.
On the same side of the family, James Stedman Dixon (1845–1911) founded the Bent Colliery Company in 1872, served as president of the Institution of Mining Engineers, sat on the Royal Commission on Coal Supplies, and in 1907 founded the James S. Dixon Chair of Mining at the University of Glasgow.
1856 · Pharmacy
Watsons, Hong Kong
Thomas Boswell Watson, an Edinburgh doctor, practised in Macao from 1845 before moving to Hong Kong in 1856 to join the Hong Kong Dispensary, the colony’s first dispensary of Western medicine. In 1858 his nephew, Alexander Skirving Watson, joined as manager. By 1869 the Dispensary was chemist to the Governor of Hong Kong and to the Duke of Edinburgh, and in 1871 it began trading under the family name as A.S. Watson & Company.
A well-known artist in his day and a friend of the painter George Chinnery, Thomas drew the view from the terrace of his house above the bay at Macao, with his children at the balustrade. His work was exhibited in London, Hong Kong and Macao in 1985.
Today A.S. Watson, celebrating its 185th anniversary in 2026, is the world’s largest international health and beauty retailer, with more than 17,000 stores including Superdrug and Savers here in the UK. Thomas Boswell Watson is James’s great-great-great-grandfather.
From a single dispensary the business grew into a household name. In 1886 it became the fifteenth company on the Hong Kong register, and Watson Road in North Point still carries its name. In 1981 it joined Hutchison Whampoa, today CK Hutchison, operating over 17,000 stores in 31 markets. AS Watson Group is one of the longest-standing companies in Hong Kong, and possibly even the world.
Watsons Water
In the 1980s and 1990s the Watsons name went racing at the Macau Grand Prix. Drivers in Watsons colours included former Formula One driver Martin Donnelly, Emanuele Pirro, Steve Soper, Duncan Huisman and nine-time Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen. BMWs in Watsons colours won the Guia Race in 1991 with Pirro and in 1997 with Soper, whose lap record stood for seventeen years, and Huisman won it four times in the 2000s.
1890 · Engineering
George Wailes & Co and the Forth Bridge
On James’s mother’s side, his great-grandfather George Wailes was a leading engineer and designer whose firm, George Wailes & Co, engineers and founders of Euston Road, London, supplied the rivets, nuts and bolts for the Forth Bridge — the great railway bridge across the Firth of Forth, opened in 1890.
His son Rex Wailes, James’s grandfather, became the world authority on windmills and was appointed OBE for his work.
1903 · Automotive
The first steam car in Liverpool
In 1903 James’s great-great-grandparents proudly showed off their steam car in Liverpool, registration M 237, among the first number plates issued under the Motor Car Act of that year.
The family also held shares in the Bibby Line, founded in Liverpool in 1807 by John Bibby and one of Britain’s oldest shipping companies. Bibby’s early orders helped launch Harland & Wolff in Belfast, the yard that went on to build the Titanic, and the Bibby Line Group still operates ships today.
1917 · Aviation
A pioneer of flight
James’s great-uncle, Flight Sub-Lieutenant Raymond Berridge of the Royal Naval Air Service, joined Naval Squadron No. 6 in France on 1 May 1917, flying Nieuport fighters. His commanding officer called him “an exceptionally skilful pilot” and “the most promising Officer I have ever had.”
Two days later, after his first patrol over enemy lines, his engine failed on take-off and he was killed. He lies in France beneath an English oak cross made by his squadron.
1914 – 1923 · Music
The Wigmore Hall
The hall on Wigmore Street opened in 1901 as the Bechstein Hall, built by the German piano maker. James’s great-grandfather, Winchester Berridge, was deputy manager of Bechstein’s London business, and when war broke out in August 1914 the government appointed him receiver. The hall was closed and sold in 1916, and on 16 January 1917, with the support of King George V, a friend of Winchester’s, it reopened under a British name: the Wigmore Hall, one of the great concert halls of its day. Winchester stayed on as its manager, and in 1923 took the lease of the Wigmore Hall and the Piano Galleries next door.
His daughter Enid, James’s grandmother, was a professional violinist who played in her own family’s concert hall. She was taught by the Hungarian virtuoso Jelly d’Arányi, for whom Ravel wrote Tzigane, and the family recalls that Enid in turn taught a young Jacqueline du Pré. The family still has a Bechstein piano, a gift from Bechstein, and a Bösendorfer played in the hall by many famous pianists.
1993 · Property
Albert Hall Estates
In 1993 James opened Albert Hall Estates, his own estate agency behind the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington. A year later, at 24, he began building a property portfolio that grew to more than 30 houses and apartments across South West London over the next twenty-five years.
2017 · Motorsport
On track
The story continues on track. From 2017 James raced with a full race licence in the Toyota MR2 Championship, winning a number of races, alongside track days in his Nissan Skyline GT-R and Lotus Europa.
2026 · Finer International
A Finer future
In 2026, from the Cotswolds near Chipping Norton, James began the Finer International journey, bringing the family threads of property, engineering and motor cars together under one house.