STEM Workshops in Carlisle

Carlisle Citadel station, designed by William Tite in a mix of Tudor and Gothic styles and opened in 1847, grew into an important railway interchange, served by 1881 by seven companies including the London and North Western, Midland, Caledonian and North British railways, and its Grade II* listing describes it as among the most important early major railway stations in Britain. In 1831, Jonathan Dodgson Carr founded a biscuit and bread business in the city that became Britain's largest baking business within fifteen years; its biscuits could be kept crisp in tins and carried by canal and railway to other parts of the country. The Carlisle engineering firm Cowans, Sheldon and Company, founded in 1847 by John Cowans and Edward Pattinson Sheldon, built railway breakdown cranes and turntables, and built the tower of Glasgow's Finnieston Crane, completed in 1931 and one of four giant cantilever cranes still standing on the River Clyde.

Sir Thomas Bouch was born in 1822 in Thursby, Cumberland, near Carlisle, and began his career as an assistant on the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway before designing branch lines and viaducts and, in 1850, introducing the world's first roll-on roll-off train ferry service across the Firth of Forth. His first Tay Bridge, opened in 1878, collapsed in a storm in December 1879 with the loss of about 75 lives, and the inquiry that followed found it badly designed, built and maintained. William Henry Bragg, born in Wigton, near Carlisle, in 1862, shared the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics with his son Lawrence for their analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays.

Story Contracting, headquartered on Burgh Road in Carlisle, is a civil engineering contractor working across the UK in rail, construction, energy, water and geotechnical engineering. The city's historic Carr's biscuit factory, now run by McVitie's owner pladis, still bakes today; in July 2025 pladis announced a £2m investment and 48 new jobs in its savoury biscuits department. In August 2025 the Pears Cumbria School of Medicine, a partnership between the University of Cumbria and Imperial College London, welcomed its first 58 students at the university's Fusehill Street campus in Carlisle, where they train as graduate-entry medical students for an Imperial degree.

Carlisle College, part of the NCG group and rated Good in its 2024 Ofsted report, offers more than 100 courses and works with more than 350 employer partners. The Pears Cumbria School of Medicine, run jointly by the University of Cumbria and Imperial College London, gives graduates a route into medicine without leaving the city. Story Contracting, the civil engineering firm headquartered on Burgh Road, recruits graduates, trainees and apprentices, with apprentices studying part-time at college towards Level 2 or 3 qualifications.