John and Charlotte Guest - GKN

In 1759, in Dowlais near Merthyr Tydfil, an iron works was founded by a group of iron masters. Eight years later, John Guest joined the company as works manager. John was succeeded by his son Thomas and in turn by his grandson also John. The iron works prospered. I tell the story of the iron works in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

In 1848 Dowlais ironworks only just survived disaster when it very nearly failed to renew the lease of the land on which the works were built. The death of Sir John four years later could also have been the end, but for his remarkable wife, Charlotte, some twenty-seven years his junior.

The GKN: Brief History of the Company tells how ‘she knew the business inside out, having immersed herself in it to support and advise her husband. She had drawn up the monthly accounts, been involved in planning, and learned the principles of iron production’.

Exploring further, it is clear that Charlotte was a colourful character. Her grandson, the Earl of Bessborough, published extracts from her diaries from which it can be seen that Charlotte was the daughter of the ninth Earl of Lindsey and had had a troubled childhood. She met Josiah John Best when she was twenty one and married him after a courtship of only three months.

They were shunned by society. Charlotte’s response was to devote her time to supporting her husband in his business, in having ten children and in mastering the Welsh language, to the extent that her translation of The Mabinigiori is lauded to this day. She also was not one to allow society to have its own way. She and her husband bought a fashionable house in London and an estate in Dorset. With her support, Josiah John became MP for Merthyr. Following his death, Charlotte ran the business for three years during difficult times when industrial unrest was rife. She built a strong management team to support he son Lord Wimbourne who would take over the running of the company. She married the family’s tutor Charles Schrieber in 1855.

The Guest family passed the batten when they decided to sell the iron works. In 1834, in Birmingham, John Nettlefold had opened a woodscrew mill. And in 1856, just down the road, Arthur Keen had founded the Patent Nut & Bolt Company (PNB) with his American partner, Francis Watkins, and which had become a major manufacturer of fasteners.’

Keen was not only an engineer, he was a director of the Birmingham and Midland Bank, and it was through this connection that the name Guest re-enters the story. Keen had heard that Lord Wimborne, now head of the Guest family, was looking to sell Dowlais ironworks and, whilst PNB was many times smaller, Keen made an approached and a deal was done for the purchase for £1.5 million. The Press were intrigued. The South Wales Daily News of 20 July 1900 observed the good value to the purchaser adding “As to Guest, Keen & Co, I look on it as a second Consett; repetition of the Nut and Bolt; an industrialist at the top of the list”. Keen had done well, and a year later he added Nettlefold, making the company we now know as Guest, Keen and Nettlefold.8 In 1905, GKN was Britain’s 15th largest company and even now a leading defence contractor.

Further reading

Edgar Jones, A History of GKN, (London: Macmillan).

Ronald Weeks - two world wars, Pilkington and Vickers

 It is chilling to think that many of those men born in the 1890s would serve through two world wars (if they survived) and could also be part of the step change in British manufacturing witnessed in the twentieth century. Ronald Weeks was one such man. He was the first Director-General of Army Equipment in the Second World War and had been and would be an innovative manufacturer.

He was the son of a Durham mining engineer. The family had been farmers in County Durham for many decades. Ronald went from school in Durham down to Charterhouse in Surrey and then to Cambridge, where he was an exceptional student. He was one of the first Cambridge graduates to pursue a career in industry.

In 1914, he was commissioned in the Prince of Wales’s Volunteers and later gained a regular commission in the Rifle Brigade where he gained a reputation for leadership and initiative in battle. He was awarded an MC in January 1917, a DSO in January 1918, a Bar to the MC in July 1918 and the Croix de Guerre as well as being mentioned in despatches. He ended the war as a major in the Rifle Brigade.

He then worked at Pilkingtons becoming the first non-family director. In the 1930s, he was part of Management Research Group No.1 with Seebohm Rowntree, exploring the management issues which were presented by companies growing ever larger.

In the Second World War he rose to have responsibility for army equipment as Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff. I explore this more in Dunkirk to D Day

After the war he joined Vickers as chairman of English Steel where he negotiated first its nationalisation and then its denationalisation. He became executive chairman of Vickers, a massive job. He held the chair through a time of radical change when Vickers had been brave enough to invest in a new plant at Tinsley Park in Sheffield in the period between nationalisations when other steel makers held back. They also grappled with the transition from major arms manufacturer to manufacture of everything from aircraft (the Viscount) to computers (Powers Samas)

J.D. Scott, writing The History of Vickers, recognised in Weeks something quite special. He writes ‘by the end of the Second World War, Weeks’ brilliance as an administrator had become recognised as something of a phenomenon. If his career and his personality had been designed for the chairmanship of Vickers they would have differed very little from the actuality’.

Further reading:

J.D. Scott, Vickers - A History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962)

Edward, Tom and Albert, and Douglas Vickers - three generations of steel makers

 By the mid eighteenth century members of the Vickers family were in business at Mill Sands, Sheffield as millers. With the growth of steel, William Vickers moved to a rolling mill business nearby and entered into a partnership which would become in 1828 Naylor, Hutchinson, Vickers & Company. William's interests turned towards the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway and its was Edward who moved from the mill business to take the lead at the Mill Sands Engineering Works.

Edward married Ann Naylor and they had four sons two of whom, Tom and Albert, were sent to Germany to receive a technical education. It was not long before the company became, simply, Vickers.

Edward was ambitious for himself and his family, but also for Sheffield, which at that time, ‘as a borough was still young, having been incorporated in 1843. Its centre lacked the dignified buildings, the wealthy shops, the well-laid streets which were even then to be found in the centres of the largest industrial cities as well as in the older communities.’ Edward became a Councillor and then, in 1846, an Alderman. All the time his business was growing and becoming very profitable. Part of the reason for this profitability was the export trade with America, where Vickers had appointed a German, Ernst Benzon, as their agent; he later became a partner.

Vickers had grown out of the Mill Sands Works and had begun work on what would become the River Don Works, with technical innovation introduced by Tom Vickers who was emerging as the technical partner. It was Albert who had the entrepreneurial flair.

I tell in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World of the growth of the company and how the expansion of Britain's railways would consume Vickers production for much the mid nineteenth century, but then the American railways would take over until men like Carnegie began the American steel industry. Demand for armaments succeeded those for railways and it was Albert who drew Vickers towards The Naval Construction and Armaments Company at Barrow, Nordenfelt and submarines and Maxim and machine guns.

The truth is that Vickers, one way or another, formed the backbone to much of our heavy manufacturing. They made steel. They were armourers to the nation. They financed Beardmore's massive shipyard on the Clyde.They built ships, but then aircraft and submarines. They built railways locomotives and a tracked competitor to Caterpillar. But so much else. They were part founders of International Computers, the British answer to IBM. They made concrete making machinery and equipment for breweries. They made printing machinery and office equipment including duplicators.

In terms of the Vickers family, Edward was the miller who grasped opportunity. He married into the Naylor family which was already financially secure. With Ann, he had four sons two of whom I have mentioned and for whom he used international connection to secure technical education in Germany. Tom was the engineer or more probably the metallurgist who pushed the boundaries of steel making. Albert pushed the boundaries of relationships and secured the growth of the company into armaments. Both Tom and Albert were by all accounts good looking and easily adopted an aristocratic grace. Tom sent his son Douglas to Eton from where he entered the business on the technical side at the bottom. He gained expertise and experience but by the time to took the chair, the post First World War world was changing. This Vickers was embraced with open arms by the colourful entrepreneur Dudley Docker from which Metropolitan Vickers emerged. Vickers also embraced arch rivals Armstrong Whitworth.

The chair passed outside the Vickers family but a remarkable institution had been created.

I wrote about them in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World in chapters 5, 7, 12, 13 and 15 and in Vehicles to Vaccines in chapters 3, 6, 12, 14, 15, 16.

Further reading:

J.D. Scott, Vickers – A History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962)