Schools GAZ Workington

In 1664 Sir Patricius Curwen (1602-1664) endowed a school at Workington in his will. It was probably the forerunner of the National School at Portland Square, established by John Christian Curwen in 1808.  The School of Industry, Guard Street, founded 1816, had the object of encouraging industriousness in poor girls and making them ‘notable housekeepers and good Christians’.

An Infants’ school (which became Wilson’s Infant School) was added at the Guard Street site in 1831. By 1847 there was a second infants’ school in Bell Street.  Spacious new National schools were built c.1860 close to the Anglican churches of St Michael and St John; they became Board schools.  Further schools were established by the School Board on the Marsh and at Westfield (built c.1883).

The Guard Street premises of Wilson’s Infant School were used for the new Workington Higher Grade School, established in 1894, later known as the Central Boys and Girls Schools, which moved to new premises on High Street in 1932.  These were amalgamated in 1947 to become a mixed secondary modern school, Newlands School, which became girls-only in 1967 and closed on reorganisation in 1984.

There was a school by the Roman Catholic church by the 1860s.  St Joseph’s Roman Catholic High School was opened in 1929.

The County Secondary School and Cumberland Technical College, Park Lane, was built in 1912 and enlarged 1933-4.  After the reorganisation of secondary schooling in 1984, the site became Workington College of Further Education,until 1969, when it was amalgamated with Whitehaven CFE with the title West Cumberland College of Science and Technology and after 1974 as West Cumbria College. It moved to the new campus at Lillyhall, Winscales in 2001 as The Lakes College (West Cumbria).  The Park Lane site was demolished in 2005 and Workington Community Hospital and social housing was built on the site.

New schools were built on the housing estates at Moorclose and Salterbeck as the town expanded in the later 20th century, including a secondary school, Southfield Technology College.