The GKN Collection

Winterbourne has strong links with Guest, Keen & Nettlefold (GKN) through John Sutton Nettlefold, whose grandfather founded Nettlefolds in the 1820s.  John himself worked for the family firm at the start of his career, and his brother continued as a Director following Nettlefolds’ merger with Guest & Keen in 1900.

Winterbourne has been collecting items relating to GKN for many years, and in 2019 we received a significant donation of archival material from GKN.  This remarkable collection contains catalogues, minute books, photographs and much more.  You can read a blog post by a University intern about the collection here.

One of GKN’s major subsidiaries was Joseph Sankey & Sons.  One of our volunteers made a detailed study of a Sankey catalogue in the collection and you can read her blog post here.

You can explore Winterbourne’s connection with GKN in our exhibition, ‘Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds:  Treasures from the Archive’ on the first floor of the house.  This exhibition was drawn from our GKN collections, and you can read more about the development of the exhibition here.