One of the world’s first aircraft manufacturers, A.V. Roe and Company was formed by Edwin Alliott Verdon-Roe and his brother H.V. Roe at Brownsfield Mills in Manchester on the 1st January 1910. One of their first designs, which was to keep the company busy through-out the First World War and beyond, was the Avro 504 fighter, with production eventually reaching 8,340 aircraft.
In the 1920s, having out grown their Brownsfield Mills site, A.V. Roe moved to New Hall Farm, Woodford in Cheshire. In 1928, Alliott Verdon-Roe sold his shares in the company and with the proceeds purchased the S.E. Saunders Company and formed Saunders-Roe, who later became famous for building flying boats. During this turmoil at Avro’s, Roy Chadwick returned to the Woodford factory as Chief Designer. He had first joined A.V.Roe and Company in 1911, as Alliott’s personal assistant and the firm’s draughtsman. He worked on many of the company’s early designs before moving to Avro’s new Experimental Test Station at Hamble near Southampton.
In 1935, Avro became a subsidiary of Hawker Siddeley. In the lead-up to the Second World War, Avro produced a number of aircraft extensively used by the Royal Air Force, including the Avro Tutor training aircraft, the Anson and the Manchester, Lancaster and Lincoln bombers.
After the war, Roy Chadwick designed the Avro Tudor, which was Britain’s first pressurised airliner, however, with the development of jet airliners at de Havilland, very few Tudors were built. Sadly, Chadwick died on 23rd August 1947 in an accident involving the prototype of the Avro Tudor 2, but not before overseeing the initial designs for another classic Avro aircraft, the Vulcan. The Vulcan bomber was originally designed as a nuclear strike aircraft and maintained the British nuclear deterrent through the early days of the Cold War.
When Avro was absorbed into Hawker Siddeley Aviation in July 1962, the Avro name was dropped. However, the Avro name was to re-appear thirty years later when in 1994 British Aerospace re-branded its 146 regional jet design and adopted the name Avro RJ (Regional Jet). The Woodford airfield remains in operation today, where BAE Systems are building the new Nimrod MRA.4 for the Royal Air Force.
