Despite not being at the centre of the UK’s car manufacturing industry, Yorkshire has and still does, make a massive contribution. Whether it is manufacturing complete cars, parts suppliers, individuals leading design and engineering or performing at the highest level of motorsport, The automotive industry owes a lot to Yorkshire.
Here at Classic Yorkshire we like to celebrate these connections and today we recognise Henry Edmunds who was instrumental in bringing Rolls and Royce together creating one of the worlds most prestigious brands.
Frederick Henry Royce was born on 27 March, in 1863 at Alwalton, near Peterborough. He was the youngest of five children in a family with dire financial problems: Henry’s father was finally declared bankrupt and, under the law of the time, imprisoned.
Aged just 10, Royce started working in London, first as a newspaper seller and later as a telegram delivery boy. Then in 1877, with financial support from his aunt, he secured a coveted apprenticeship at the Great Northern Railway (GNR) workshops in Peterborough. But two years later, his aunt’s own money troubles left her unable to pay his annual apprenticeship fee. Undaunted, Royce returned to London and, in 1881, began work at the fledgling Electric Lighting & Power Generating Company.
In late 1884, he founded F H Royce & Co in Manchester producing small items such as battery-powered doorbells, the company progressed to making overhead cranes, railway shunting capstans and other heavy industrial equipment. By 1901, years of overwork were taking a severe toll on his health and the resulting strain meant that in 1902, his health collapsed completely.
Royce’s doctors prescribed complete rest and persuaded him to take a 10-week holiday with his wife’s family in South Africa. On the long voyage, he read a newly published book, ‘The Automobile – Its Construction and Management’.
On his return to England, fully revitalised, Royce acquired his first motor car, a French-built 10 H.P. Decauville. His holiday reading had focused his mind on producing his own car. He chose the Decauville because it was one of the finest cars available to him, in order to dismantle it and then, in his most famous phrase, ‘take the best that exists and make it better’.
He began by building three two-cylinder 10 H.P. cars, based on the Decauville layout. His friend and business associate, Henry Edmunds, borrowed one of these original Royce 10H.P. cars to complete in the 1,000-mile Slide Slip Trials organised by the Automobile Club of Great Britain & Ireland (later the Royal Automobile Club, or RAC) in April 1904. Edmunds was enormously impressed, and realised this was precisely the high-quality, British-made model that a friend and fellow Club member was looking for to stock in his new London car dealership. That friend was, of course, The Hon Charles Stewart Rolls.
Henry Edmunds was born in Halifax in 1853 he had a middle-class background, being educated at private school until the age of 15 when he joined the family business, which was involved engineering and many other ventures involving iron. By the age of 18 he had designed a successful oil lamp and an engine running on oil; then he took an extreme interest in electricity, the new wonder of the age. He even met Thomas Edison at the time when this prolific inventor was inventing the first recorded speech. By 1893 he joined the board of WT Glover, a major manufacturer of electrical cable, and became managing director.
Pic above: Henry Edmunds.
Another director at Glover was Ernest Claremont, who at the time was a business partner of Royce’s. That business, FH Royce and Co Ltd, manufactured a range of products including electric motors and dynamos, so the two men had common interests.
Edmunds was also one of the earliest members of the Automobile Club where he was on the committee; there he met and became friends with Charles Rolls and his partner Claude Johnson, who was the first secretary of the AA.
In the meanwhile Henry Royce was finding business a little difficult and Edmunds encouraged him to consider moving into car manufacture. Royce got hold of a De Dion Quad (a sort of motorised fourwheeled bicycle) and a 10 HP Decauville voiturette (a miniature car) which he wasn’t greatly impressed with but which he used as a test bed for some of his own ideas and improvements. Eventually he incorporated these into his own 10 horsepower car. Edmunds was impressed with it and arrange to introduce Rolls and Royce to each other, and the rest is history.
When the Rolls – Royce factory in Derby was formally opened Edmunds was the guest of honour where his title of ‘Godfather of Rolls Royce’ was bestowed on him; but from then on his association with Rolls-Royce faded away. Despite the fact that the company would probably never have started without him, he took no more part in the development of the company.
It is worth stating that Royce never designed a complete car: up to 1949, Rolls-Royce produced only ‘rolling chassis’, equipped with engine and drivetrain, upon which a specialist coachbuilder then built bodywork to the customer’s specification. The rolling chassis did, however, include the bulkhead (the panel separating the engine compartment from the passenger cabin) and the radiator, which determined, at least in part, the finished motor car’s overall proportions.