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).