GKN Screws and Fasteners Ltd, Underground Shadow Factory, Birmingham, Urbex

In 1854 J. S. Nettlefold, a Birmingham screw manufacturer, had revolutionized his industry by introducing automated American machinery. Room was needed to house this; Nettlefold, joined by his brother-in-law Joseph Chamberlain, father of the statesman, established the Heath Street Works in Cranford Street, Smethwick. The firm dominated the market by the mid 1860s. In 1880, the year in which it became a limited company, Nettlefolds took over one of its local rivals, the Birmingham Screw Co. The newly acquired works was almost as large as the Heath Street Works and faced it from the opposite bank of the Birmingham Canal.

By the outbreak of the First World War the new company produced over half the screws and about a quarter of the nuts and bolts made in the country. In the late 1960s the headquarters of Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds Ltd., by then an investment company, adjoined the Heath Street Works, a 50-acre complex run by GKN Screws and Fasteners Ltd. and employing some 4,500 people

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