Marshall Company

This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails

Marshall of Cambridge was established in 1909 by David Gregory Marshall as a car vehicle business, specialising as a chauffeur drive company. It was located in a small lock-up garage in Brunswick Gardens. Marshall’s first involvement in aviation dates back to 1912, when its mechanics helped repair the engine of a British Army airship, the Beta II, which had made an emergency landing on Jesus Green, just behind where the Marshall garage was located close to the centre of town before it moved to Newmarket Road. The Marshall family purchased an estate on what was then the edge of Cambridge, the house and land of Whitehall Farm and in 1937 the new Cambridge Airport opened. With the Second World War in 1939, the aerodrome soon became involved in war work; training pilots and repairing airplanes. Whitehall Farm was sold to build houses for Whitehall Estate and Peverel Estate, but the Marshall aerodrome buildings and runways expanded to become a complex at the top of Newmarket Road.