Rolls100 – Commemorating 100 years of the death of Rt. Hon. Charles S. Rolls

Henry Royce was a miller’s son from Huntingdonshire who had founded his own manufacturing company in 1884 in the Manchester district of Hulme, making domestic electrical fittings.

In the 1890s, he diversified into electric cranes and by the beginning of the 20th century Royce had started to, build motor cars simply out of interest in a corner of the Hulme workshop. One of the directors of his company, Henry Edmunds, bought one of the cars and was so impressed that he mentioned it to a friend, Charles Rolls, who ran a car showroom in London.

Rolls and Royce arranged to meet at the Midland Hotel in Manchester in May 1904, where they agreed that Royce would produce the cars and then sell them exclusively through Rolls’ showroom.

By 1906, business was so good that they decided to into manufacture cars together in association with Rolls’ partner, Claude Johnson, and they established the Rolls-Royce company.

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