STEM Workshops in West Bromwich & Sandwell

Sandwell's six towns carry some of the most important sites in British engineering. At Smethwick, Boulton, Watt and their sons opened the Soho Foundry in 1796, the world's first purpose-built steam engine factory. Nearby, Thomas Telford's Galton Bridge opened in 1829 to span the new canal cutting, reputedly the highest single-span arch bridge in the world at the time; its ironwork was cast at the Horseley Ironworks in Tipton, which also built the world's first iron steamship, the Aaron Manby, launched in 1821. Chance Brothers, founded at Spon Lane, Smethwick, in 1824, glazed the Crystal Palace in 1851 and made the opal glass for the clock faces of the Elizabeth Tower, home of Big Ben.

James Keir, the Lunar Society chemist elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1785, lived at Hill Top in West Bromwich and, with Alexander Blair, founded a pioneering chemical works at Tipton in 1780, making alkali on an industrial scale before adding a soap factory. Sir James Timmins Chance, partner in the Smethwick glassworks and its Oldbury alkali works for fifty years, transformed lighthouse engineering: his work on Fresnel lens systems earned him the Institution of Civil Engineers' Telford Medal in 1867 and a baronetcy in 1900. Chance-made optics went on to light coastlines around the world.

The making tradition is still live. Robinson Brothers, founded in West Bromwich in 1869 and family-owned to this day, is a longstanding independent speciality chemicals manufacturer, and Avery Weigh-Tronix still builds weighing equipment on the Soho Foundry site in Smethwick. The borough sits at the heart of the Black Country's base of engineering and manufacturing businesses. Two new landmarks bookend the story: Sandwell Aquatics Centre, the only venue built new for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, reopened to the community in 2023, and Midland Metropolitan University Hospital, which opened in Smethwick in October 2024.

The routes for pupils are unusually visible here. Sandwell College's £77 million Central Campus in West Bromwich runs engineering T Levels and apprenticeships in industry-standard workshops. Midland Metropolitan University Hospital brings NHS clinical and healthcare science careers to the borough's doorstep, while long-established employers such as Robinson Brothers offer roles in chemical manufacturing. Birmingham's universities, including Aston and Birmingham City, are a short train ride from Smethwick Galton Bridge station.