The Sunbeam Motorcycle Company was started by John Marston, who was born in Ludlow, in the county Shropshire, England in 1836. He was a member of a minor landowning family.
In 1851, at age 15, he was sent to Wolverhampton to be apprenticed to Edward Perry as a japanware manufacturer. Eight years on, at the age of 23, John left and set up his own japanning business - John Marston Ltd - making any and every sort of domestic article. He did so well that when Perry died in 1871, Marston took over his company and incorporated it into his own.
The company began making bicycles and, on the suggestion of his wife Ellen, Marston adopted the trademark brand “Sunbeam”. As a result, the Paul Street works were called ‘Sunbeamland’. They were made until 1936 and, to the end, remained the best bicycle money could buy.
From 1903 John Marston Ltd had made some early experiments in adding engines to bicycles but they were unsuccessful, with one man being killed. John Marston’s aversion to motorcycles did not encourage further development, and so the Sunbeam Motor Car Company Ltd was founded in 1905. However, suffering from a slump which hit car making, Marston (at the age of 76) was pushed into making motorcycles - for which there was a greater and increasing market - from 1912 onwards.
CYT were awarded the heritage lottery grant to explore the history of this world famous company and to investigate the impact that it had on the local community, its employees and their families.
Please watch the video below to see how we ‘went back in time’ to a former age, and preserved the memory of this important part of local history.
