Rolls and Royce

Haircut day in Manchester, which as usual enabled me to take a stroll around the city centre whilst J was being attended to. I took quite a few photos in various locations, but as it’s “tiny Tuesday” it’s this detail of a 1934 Rolls Royce 20/25 Barker Limousine parked incongruously behind the arches and up the steps of the entrance to the Midland Hotel that wins the day.

It is there to celebrate the 120 years since the hotel first opened in 1903, and specifically celebrates the meeting there on May 4th 1904 of Charles Stewart Rolls and Fredrick Henry Royce. A friend of Rolls, who wanted him to see the car that Royce had built, engineered the meeting. The outcome of the meeting was that the two, who came from very different backgrounds (Rolls an aristocrat and old Etonian, Royce having left school at 16 and grafted his way forward), decided to join forces and work together. The rest, as they say is history. The meeting is celebrated by the company at the hotel on May 4th every year, although since 2003 although the name is retained the present motor company is a subsidiary of BMW.