Cambridge Airport : 1930s

Cambridge Airport is the biggest privately owned Airport in Europe and the City’s biggest employer with 4,400 jobs. The site was acquired by the Marshall family in 1935 and this wonderful Grade 2 listed terminal was constructed in 1938.

During World War II, Marshall's played a key role in training over 20,000 pilots and flying instructors. The firm became the UK's largest aircraft repairer, fixing or converting 5,000 planes during the war. In the 1950s and 1960s, such major aeroplane manufacturers as De Havilland, Bristol, Vickers and English Electric entrusted Marshall's with the servicing of their aircraft.  The company built, under subcontract, the famous droop nose for Concorde. In recent times it has maintained, for example, the RAF’s Hercules Transport fleet, British Airways 747 fleet and innumerable business jets. It has had regular services to a variety of places including Paris, Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Gothenburg, the Channel Islands with specialist air services also provided to the US Air Force, Philips, AstraZenaca and Microsoft as well as horse transportation to nearby Newmarket.

In 2020, the Company announced that it had signed a provisional agreement to move to Cranfield Bedfordshire by 2030 which would allow for the building of 12,000 new homes. This will have a huge impact on the size of Cambridge’s current population of 124,000 and this historic City as a whole.