Sunbeam Motorcycles was founded by John Marston in 1887.

John Marston was born in 1836 in Ludlow. John Marston’s foray into manufacturing began when he was an apprentice at age 15, at Edward Perry’s Tinpanners and Japanners in the Jeddo Works, in Wolverhampton.

He excelled within his position, so much so that when his apprenticeship was over at the age of 23, he bought his own Jappanning business from Daniel Smith Lester over in Bilston.
He combined this with Fred Walton & Company and Thurston and Company to create the business John Marston Limited. This company also produced high quality Jappanned Tin goods.

The company proved so successful that when Edward Perry Passed away in 1871 he bought his company and combined it with his own. As the business moved forward, so did the aspirations and goals of the company.

  As John Marston was an enthusiastic cyclist, they began by building bicycles and bicycle parts in 1897, his business was booming and from there they began building engines and eventually Motorcars.
In a two year period between 1899-1901 they began building test cars that they would drive around Wolverhampton.

In this period the board of directors were not very keen on the idea of manufacturing cars, but John Marston and his now right-hand man Thomas Cureton decided to go ahead with the project.
The project moved full steam ahead and in the later half of 1900 they purchased land in Blakenhall for a full fledged car manufacturing factory, from there the first Sunbeam motorcar was available to the public in 1902 for the price of £130.

Sunbeam Motorbikes

Business was steady, but the group wanted to expand on what they were already doing.
In 1903 they began by putting engines on push bikes, much to John Marston’s caution, he believed they were dangerous and his thoughts and feelings were proved right when an employee was test riding a bicycle was killed in an accident.
The experiments ceased after this.
The tide turned for John Marston though, his views still remained the same, he could see that other local manufacturers had successful machines.

Between 1911 and 1912 John Marston approached John Greenwood, John Greenwood had previous experience with Rover. The group also approached Harry Stevens, who was a local motorcycle designer for A.J. Stevens. A.J. Stevens were very successful and produced large numbers of motorcycles in the Wolverhampton area.
Harry was taken on as a consulting engineer and began work on the first Sunbeam motorcycle which was a 349 cc. single cylinder side-valve machine. John Greenwood began preparations for production and the bikes officially went on sale in 1912 and proved to be a massive success, so much so that it overtook the popularity of their bicycles.

John Marston – Mayor Of Wolverhampton

 John Marston eventually retired in 1916 and he lived with his wife, Ellen in their home.
He was a colourful character, he was raised in Ludlow and his father was a justice of the peace as well as mayor of Ludlow. Local politics where never too far away from John’s adult life. In 1889  John and Ellen celebrated their silver wedding anniversary, later that year, in the November, John was made mayor of Wolverhampton. He retained this position for another year and made some changes that helped the city and its people.

He worked hard with his committee members to vastly improve the state of the sanitation and sewerage works in the city. They purchased land for a much needed extension of the waterworks. The committee got to work on the new water pump house that would supply pure and healthy water to the residents and business’s, each of the engines in the pumps were capable of lifting four million gallons of this water, ensuring that the supply would continue even if the engine broke down.

Along with this he also helped get a power station built to supply residents and businesses and along with this John was made a chairman of the finance committee so he had more power with what to do for people in the borough.

Sunbeam And The War

 During the first world war Sunbeam was responsible for helping in the war time manufacturing effort. They made trucks and ambulances for the British army, as well as aircraft engines like the V12 Sunbeam Cossack as well as small aircraft. They were also pioneers in manufacturing during this period, they utilised the first single piece aluminium block engines which wouldn’t become a popular design until the 1930’s. 

 When John had retired in 1916, he and his wife moved to Colwyn Bay, North Wales, sadly John Marston passed away on the 8^th of March 1918, but the legacy he left behind lived on and the brand name Sunbeam was in and of itself a benchmark for true manufacturing and quality of excellence.

In recognition of John Marston and all of his work which holds place at the top of Black Country manufacturing heritage , we have designed a
T-Shirt honouring his endeavours