THE FIRM THAT PUTS THE GREAT IN BRITAIN

During Britain’ s darkest hour, it was the company that helped transform the nation’s hopes. in one of its factories, it built more than 800 Spitfires; in others, steel helmets and ammunition boxes were produced by the million.

it manufactured specialised tanks for the D-Day landings as well as tank parts, shell cases and countless components for aircraft including the Mosquito.

But then, gKn was only drawing on its history; from before the napoleonic Wars, it had been supplying munitions to the British Army — its cannonballs helped to defeat the French at Waterloo.

gKn may not be as much of a household name as two other companies founded in 1759 — Wedgwood and guinness — but its contribution to British life has been infinitely more significant than pottery and stout.

Today, one in two of the world’s cars contain gKn parts, fighter jet canopies are built by the company, and it also produces parts for the B-21 stealth bomber in the u.S., and turbines, combustion chambers and nozzles for Europe’s Ariane 5 space rocket.

Carpenters and DiY enthusiasts will have bought screws made by gKn and our greatgrandparents will have travelled on gKn-made railway lines across the globe.

The company started as the Dowlais iron Company near Merthyr Tydfil, to deal in — according to its deeds — ‘ the Art, Mystery, Occupation and Business of an iron Master and iron Manufacturer’.

These were the earliest days of the industrial revolution and the bellows for the firm’s first furnace were powered by a water wheel that had to be rotated, hamsterlike, by the tread of workers’ feet when the water supply ran short.

SOON, it became clear that conflict was good for the firm that went on to become gKn. With the British fighting the Seven Years’ War against France, then the American War of independence, the Army had a large demand for the iron needed to make musket balls.

The company expanded rapidly under the stewardship of John guest, the works manager whose surname would later provide the first of gKn’s initials.

guest and his son Thomas embraced new technologies — especially the steam engine, which not only replaced unreliable water wheels, but also powered the locomotives that pensioned off the horses that lugged the iron down the valleys.

in 1815, Thomas guest’s son, Josiah, took over the firm, and it was he who capitalised on the dawn of the railways to make the firm fantastic profits.

According to Andrew Lorenz in his book gKn: The Making Of A Business, 1759-2009, during the 1830s, Dowlais was producing 20,000 tons of rails a year, for lines in Britain, russia and the u.S. When Josiah guest died in 1852, he left behind a company in very healthy shape indeed.

it was not until July 1900 that the firm’s name changed, when Arthur Keen, a thrusting entrepreneur who had founded the successful Patent nut & Bolt Company (PnB), bought Dowlais from Josiah’s son, ivor.

The new company was called guest, Keen & Co, but not for long. Keen bought a screw manufacturer called nettlefolds from its reluctant owner Edward nettlefold two years later.

The name became guest, Keen & nettlefolds, or gKn for short.

The outbreak of war in 1914 saw gKn and similar firms coming under government control. Although some of its highly-skilled employees were in reserved occupations, many did see action.

Among them was Sergeant John Collins, who won the Victoria Cross in 1917 in Palestine.

He was not the first gKn man to have won the award — John Williams, who worked at gKn’s bolt and nut factory, had been awarded the VC for actions during the battle of rorke’s Drift in 1879.

After the war, gKn successfully navigated depressions and slumps. Britain’s gradual re-armament throughout the Thirties was a boon, and when war did break out, factories owned by gKn were turned over to the cause.

But while war was good for gKn, peace brought uncertainty. The post- war Labour government nationalised gKn’s steel interests, which were briefly returned to the company by the Conservatives before being re-nationalised again by Labour in the Sixties.

As gKn, with a 100,000-strong workforce, entered the turbulent Seventies, a new threat came in the form of the increasingly militant trades unions.

UNSURPRISINGLY, GKN was supportive of Margaret Thatcher’s battles against the Brothers. When one executive met the PM, he told her that he couldn’t believe she would do what she’d promised.

The executive recalled: ‘ She turned on me — i shall never forget those eyes — and said: “You can believe me.” ’

gKn continued to diversify. it made armoured personnel carriers such as Saxons and Warriors for the Army, and owned a large chunk of Westland Helicopters.

Anybody who owned a Mini — as well as countless other makes — drove a car which featured joints made by gKn. Airbus wings are made by a subsidiary of gKn, and the firm owns one of the world’s oldest aerospace companies, Fokker Technologies.

Whether gKn survives remains to be seen. if it is to keep going, the board will need to draw on the same sense of ‘ Art and Mystery’ that was enshrined in its deeds more than two centuries ago.