His father ran a flour mill which he leased from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners but the business failed and the family moved to London.

In 1884, with £20 of savings, he entered a partnership with Ernest Claremont, a friend who contributed £50, and they started a business making domestic electric fittings in a workshop in Cooke Street, Hulme, Manchester, called F. H. Royce and Company.

Following a decline in trade after the Second Boer War, and the arrival of increasing competition by cranes and dynamos from Germany and the United States, Royce began considering the motor car as a potential new product for the company.

[3] With his fascination for all things mechanical he became increasingly focused on motor cars and bought first, in 1901, a small De Dion and in 1902 or 1903 a 1901 model two cylinder Decauville.

It was introduced in 1915 to meet British military requirements during the First World War[4] and proved to be one of only two aero engines made by the Allies that was neither a production nor a technical failure.

In spite of this he returned to work but was prevented from visiting the factory, which had moved to larger premises, fitted out to detailed plans by Royce, in Derby in 1908.

Less than a year later, the "R” engine, designed in his studio in the village, set a new world air speed record of 357.7 miles per hour and won the Schneider Trophy of 1929.

The result was that Royce found that the "R" could be made to produce more power and the Supermarine S.6B seaplane won the Trophy at 340.08 mph (547.31 km/h) on 13 September 1931.

He told them that such a fast car should have a means by which the driver could adjust the stiffness of the suspension whilst they were driving, to suit the road conditions The night before he died he sat up in bed and drew a sketch on the back of an envelope which he gave to Miss Aubin (his nurse and housekeeper) telling her to see that the "boys" in the factory got it safely.

A few years later the Royce conceived driver adjustable dampers evolved into a ground breaking "ride control" system which automatically adjusted the stiffness of the dampers to match the speed of the car - softer at low speed for better comfort and increasingly stiffer as the car went faster to provide better stability and response.In addition to this automatic control, the driver was still provided with a steering wheel mounted adjustment to tune the range of damping stiffness to suit their preference.

As no Government assistance was forthcoming at first, in the national interest they went ahead with development of what was called the "PV-12" engine (standing for Private Venture, 12-cylinder).

Royce, who lived by the motto "Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble", was appointed OBE in 1918,[7] and was created a baronet, of Seaton in the County of Rutland, in 1930 for his services to British Aviation.

After he fell ill, Royce was looked after by a nurse, Miss Ethel Aubin for twenty years (after his death she married G.H.R.

His cremated remains were initially buried under his statue at the Rolls-Royce works in Derby, but in 1937 his urn was removed to the parish church of Alwalton, his birthplace.

He is also commemorated in Royce Hall, student accommodation at Loughborough University,[11] and until 2011 at one of Peterborough's Queensgate shopping centre car parks.