Edwin Alliott Verdon Roe (b. Patricroft, Manchester, 26 April 1877 - d. 4 January 1958), had his first experience with aircraft design when George Davidson gave him the post of draughtsman on the Davidson Air-Car monoplane he had designed. It was decided to build the machine in America. Roe went out to Colorado in April 1906 and there created drawings for the Davidson machine.

In 1907 Roe returned to England, where Lord Northcliffe of the Daily Mail offered a prize of £75 for a model capable of sustained flight. Alliott took the prize and, thus encouraged, set out to design and built his own real aircraft. He set up shop in the stables behind the surgery belonging to his brother, Dr. S. Verdon Roe in Putney, London, the completed machine being taken to Brooklands, near Weybridge, for testing. There, the Roe 1 made short hops on June 8, 1908, but his flights were not registered officially by the Royal Aero Club.

Having been evicted from the circuit, he started to build a radically different aeroplane. Roe found a new site at Walthamstow Marshes in East London (now part of the Lee Valley Regional Park) where he adapted two railway arches as a workshop. The resulting Triplane, erected with the assistance of E.V.B Fisher and R. L. Howard Flanders and fitted with a 9 h.p. JAP engine, created history on July 13, 1909 when the short ‘hops’ officially became ‘flights’, and by July 23 it had flown 900ft and A.V. Roe was recognised by the Aero Club as the first Englishman to design, build and fly an all-British aeroplane.

In November 1909, facing eviction from Walthamstow Marshes, Roe moved, first to Old Deer Park, Richmond, Surrey and then to Wembley Park, Middlesex. By now, Roe’s funds were getting low. His brother Humphrey Verdon Roe (b. April 18, 1879; d. July 25, 1949) was himself a successful businessman, and owner of Everard and Company of Brownsfield Mills, Manchester so, on January 1, 1910, with financial assistance from H.V., the private firm of A.V. Roe and Company was founded. The fledgling company was given engineering space at Brownsfield Mills and from then the company products were marketed under the trade name Avro. One of the design offices earliest employees was Roy Chadwick who went on to design many Avro types. Meanwhile, the management of Brooklands had undergone a change and this enabled Roe to leave Wembley Park and return there. Roe also set up a flying school at Brooklands but, with its increasing popularity as a flying centre, Roe was forced to leave Brooklands and moved the school to Shoreham, a site adjacent to the River Adur which made it ideal for land or water machines.

By early 1913, orders had grown considerably and this enabled the firm to reform as a limited company on January 11, 1913. By the following April they had outgrown Brownsfield Mills and moved into larger premises in Miles Platting. The outbreak of World War I saw a bigger surge in orders and even these new premises were inadequate. Fortunately, the nearby company of Mather & Platt had just completed a new extension and these premises were rented to became the Park Works of A.V. Roe. In order to have its own works, however, a large piece of land adjacent to the Park Works was acquired, although this, the Newton Heath Works, was not completed until the end of 1919.

In 1916, A. V. Roe purchased land in Hamble for the establishment of an aircraft factory on what became known as the South airfield. Land was also purchased in 1916 for the building of 24 houses for employees. Production and test flying started there late in 1917. Also joining the workforce at A.V. Roe at Hamble was Herbert John Louis Hinkler. The end of World War I saw an immediate cancellation in military orders resulting in severe financial problems. All main production moved to Manchester and, on a very much reduced staff, Hamble became an experimental aircraft department.

In August 1920 68.5% of the company's shares were acquired by nearby Crossley Motors who had an urgent need for more factory space for vehicle body building. In 1924, the Company left Alexandra Park Aerodrome in south Manchester where test flying had taken place during the period since 1918. A rural site to the south of the growing city was found at New Hall Farm, Woodford in Cheshire, which continued to serve aviation builders BAE Systems until 2011. The same year Avro acquired land for the new north airfield at Hamble, which was opened for use in 1926. This airfield became the main site for flying as aircraft size increased and the south airfield was eventually closed in 1933. In 1928 Crossley Motors sold Avro to Armstrong Siddeley Holdings Ltd. and the same year, A.V.Roe resigned from the company he had founded and with S.E. Saunders formed Saunders Roe Limited of Cowes, Isle of Wight.

In January 1931, the Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Reserve School moved to Hamble from Whitley, near Coventry, and became Air Service Training Ltd. Finally in 1935 Avro became part of the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Co. Ltd., after the amalgamation of the Armstrong Siddeley Development Co. Ltd. and the Hawker Aircraft Co. Ltd. but continued operating as A.V. Roe & Co. Ltd. with the trade name Avro.

On July 1, 1963 the A.V. Roe & Co. Ltd. company name (and the trade name Avro) disappeared as it, together with the Sir W.G. Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft, Ltd., became part of the Avro Whitworth Division of Hawker Siddeley Aviation, Ltd. Subsequently all aircraft in production, known previously under the individual company names, became Hawker Siddeley products. The name Avro reappeared in 1993 when British Aerospace (into which Hawker Siddeley merged in 1977) centered its Regional Jet manufacturing at Woodford under the name of BAe Regional Aircraft Ltd., Avro International Aerospace Division, to manufacture the Avro RJ range, upgraded versions of the British Aerospace BAe 146 series. The name Avro International disappeared on January 1, 2001.