Arthur Marshall

Sir Arthur Marshall was the oldest of eight children of David Marshall who, in 1909, founded Marshall of Cambridge car hire and motor business. The company went on to become one of Britain’s most successful privately owned aerospace engineering companies.

Arthur was educated at Tonbridge School and then Jesus College, Cambridge, where he took a degree in engineering. He obtained his pilot’s licence in 1928 and, the following year, he and his father purchased their first aeroplane, a Gypsy Moth. In his spare time Arthur gave flying lessons and in 1931 became a Master Pilot of the Guild of Air Pilots. Due to his success with giving lessons, Marshall bought some land just outside Cambridge, and it was on this land that the present Cambridge Airport was developed.

The techniques of the Marshall Flying School were adopted by the RAF, and the school trained more than 20,000 pilots and instructors. The company also played an important role in World War II, repairing over 5,000 planes. After the War, Marshall Aerospace was developed into a large and successful, aviation maintenance and repair business. They were involved in the design and building of Concorde’s “Droop Snoot”. The company was also involved with the space shuttle Challenger, which made 121 orbits of the earth in 1985.

Marshall was chairman of the company from the time of his father’s death in 1942 until 1990, when it was one of the largest privately owned companies in Britain. He carried on working a 65-hour, seven-day week, until he was 86. Marshall was made an OBE in 1948 and was knighted in 1974. He was a High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, and in 2001 the Sir Arthur Marshall Institute of Aeronautics was formed as part of the Cambridge University engineering department. At the age of 90, Marshall completed his autobiography “The Marshall Story – A Century of Wheels and Wings.”

The athletics career of Arthur Marshall was nowhere near impressive as his business career. While at Tonbridge he finished third in the 880 yards at the 1922 Public School Championships and, after going to Cambridge, won both the 440 and 880 in that year’s Freshmen’s Sports. He won his running Blue in 1923 in the 440 yards, in a race won by team-mate Harold Abrahams. Marshall was a reserve member of the Great Britain 4 x 400 metres relay squad at the 1924 Paris Olympics. In 1925 he ran for Cambridge against Oxford in the annual cross-country match and finished seventh.

At the time of his death in 2007, Arthur Marshall was 103-years-of-age and was the oldest living Olympian, despite only being a reserve in 1924.