STEM Workshops in Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire helped build the jet age. At Hatfield, the de Havilland Aircraft Company designed and built the Comet, the world's first jet airliner, which made its maiden flight on 27 July 1949 and entered scheduled service in 1952. The same Hatfield site later helped develop the Blue Streak rocket, which formed the lower stage of Europa, the European launcher that was a precursor to Ariane. A few miles east at Stevenage, the aerospace tradition shifted into space, and the county has stayed closely tied to British engineering ever since. St Albans, meanwhile, stands on the Roman city of Verulamium, a centre of trade long before the aircraft arrived.

Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, the aircraft designer and manufacturer whose company produced the Tiger Moth, the Mosquito and the Comet, built his business at Hatfield and died in Watford in 1965. Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist and cosmologist, grew up in St Albans, attended St Albans School from 1952 to 1959, and was inspired there by his mathematics teacher Dikran Tahta before going on to Oxford and Cambridge. Verulamium itself was excavated in the 1930s by the archaeologists Mortimer Wheeler and Tessa Wheeler, whose careful methods helped establish modern field archaeology.

Stevenage is the centre of the UK's major space activities. Airbus Defence and Space builds satellites there, including ESA's Solar Orbiter and the Aeolus-2 wind-mapping satellite, and it assembled the ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin. Stevenage is also home to GSK's research hub and the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, a science park for life-sciences start-ups. Ocado Group runs its grocery-technology and robotics operations from Hatfield. The University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, whose roots lie in the de Havilland aerospace works, runs astrophysics and space science degrees and operates the Bayfordbury teaching observatory. The county also hosts Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden near Watford, where the Harry Potter films were made, and the long-established Elstree Studios at Borehamwood, anchoring a substantial film and visual-effects sector.

Aerospace and space engineering offer high-skill careers at Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage, which runs apprenticeships and graduate routes in satellite and spacecraft engineering. The life sciences cluster around the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst and GSK opens routes into pharmaceutical research and manufacturing. Ocado in Hatfield recruits software, robotics and data engineers. The University of Hertfordshire provides degrees in aerospace and mechanical engineering, computer science, astrophysics and software, while the film and visual-effects studios at Leavesden and Borehamwood create technical and digital production careers. Apprenticeships in engineering, electronics, software and laboratory science are available across the county, and proximity to London and Cambridge widens the options further.