After studying at Lancaster Royal Grammar School, he matriculated to St John's College, Cambridge, graduating with First Class Honours in 1878.
From 1867 to 1875 he studied at the Lancaster Royal Grammar School, where he met R. H. Tiddeman, who took Marr on a number of field trips and geological surveys.
[2] In 1875, he matriculated to St John's College, Cambridge to study geology as an exhibitioner, having won a Foundation Scholarship.
[1] As an undergraduate, he published several papers, including one on his discovery of Cambrian fossils in Caernarfonshire that could not be accurately dated, something that occupied a lot of his later work.
[1] Marr then returned to the Lake District, where he worked with Henry Alleyne Nicholson on the succession of the Stockdale Shales.