The eastern gateway to the Lake District

However, if Kendal is the southern gateway, then surely Penrith has the right to claim to be its eastern counterpart.

Connected north and south by the M6 and the West Coast Mainline and east to west by the A66, the town is a familiar name for those visiting the national park.

Its transport links also make it a handy hub for industry and logistics, with Penrith and Gilwilly industrial estates and Eden Business Park providing a home for well-known businesses including bakery Greggs, AW Jenkinson Forest Products, agricultural supplies company Carrs Billington, Ast Signs and catering supplier Caterprep to name just a few.

In the town centre, the Penrith Business Improvement District is also working hard to reinvent it as a destination for more than just shopping.

BID manager Joanna Fozard says the organisation is focusing on making it a destination in its own right, where people go for food, socialising and entertainment and with retailers benefiting in turn.

"We're trying to angle the idea of the town centre being much more of a community meeting space and a place to engage and socialise with everybody and shop and support the local businesses, rather than necessarily the primary shopping focus,” she says.

The BID funds the Christmas lights and Christmas lights switch on each year, as well as supporting events such as the Winter Droving and Mayday activities.

It is also involved in an initiative to sell hanging baskets which local businesses can buy, with the BID employing a dedicated team member to water and maintain the 200 baskets now on display in the town.

The BID is also working with the town council to help put on live music events at the weekends over the summer.

With many new housing developments springing up around Penrith, Joanna also hopes new residents can be enticed to begin using the town centre.

In May Barratt Homes was given permission to build 105 homes off Carleton Road in the town.

This is in addition to 82 homes that have been built nearby by local developer Genesis Homes.

“We want to draw those people who are coming in and sitting on the edges of Penrith to come into town as opposed to getting in their cars and driving to other places,” says Joanna.

"We can't battle against internet shopping and its convenience but we can counter it with the experience of shopping and the friendliness of the businesses and the relationships that they build up with people.

“We're always referred to as the ‘Gateway to the Lake District’. We'd quite like people to not just pop in and get their big supermarket shop but stay and explore a bit.”

Dan Harding, who is vice chair of the BID, as well as the director of the Angel Lane Chippie and restaurant Foundry 34, says the town needs to overcome an “identity crisis”.

Dan has been running the chippy alongside his father Dave since 2007 and received an Inspiring Eden award last year in recognition of his contribution to the local community.

“In the last 20 years Penrith has gone from a very strong market town, having a really good Tuesday and Saturday market, and we lost them. Then our identity changed to more of a service town,” says Dan.

However, as town centre banks have closed and with some professional services businesses looking to relocate to outside of the town, Dan says it has to reinvent itself again.

"We've got an identity crisis. Once we work that out, we need to then put all our energy into focusing on improving from that identity. We're all linked. If all the other businesses around me are struggling then we're all struggling.”

Virginia Taylor, Westmorland and Furness councillor for Penrith South, hopes the town hall can play a part in the ambition to bring more people into the town centre by being used as a venue for arts and cultural activities,
“The more people who are brought to the towns to do things the more the shops will benefit,” she says.

Despite the new developments she says housing is still a big challenge.

"We've still got problems with affordability and we've got big problems with the private rented sector," she says.

"In terms of jobs and retaining young people, we haven't cracked the problem of retaining or bringing back the people that go away to university and we haven't really cracked the issue of attracting young families and keeping them.

"One of the real problems is we can't really attract inward investment because we haven't got a workforce and it’s a real catch 22.”

Two developments on the horizon which could help are National Highways’ plans to upgrade and dual parts of the A66 between Penrith and Scotch Corner, making the town even more easily accessible, and the proposal to build the Inspiring Eden Enterprise Hub, on land at Stoneybeck Roundabout.

In November the government allocated £7m to support the hub, which will include a mix of office, studio, workshop and collaborative spaces, supporting an estimated 740 businesses both directly and in the wider district, creating an estimated 655 jobs and generating £26.2 million in additional economic value over a 10-year period.

However, for now, businesses are already thriving on Penrith’s industrial estates.

One of the more recent additions to Gilwilly Industrial Estate is Woggle Goggle, where Ben and Jacqueline Levene are busy teaching swimming classes after taking the plunge and opening their own swimming pool last year.

The couple began the business 12 years ago, teaching swimming lessons based at the Fire Fighters Charity’s pool at Jubilee House, in Eamont Bridge.

However, when the pandemic hit they were unable to use the pool for 18 months and decided to build their own to ensure they would always have somewhere to base their business.

They worked with Atkinson Builders, in Penrith, to build a brand new swimming pool on the Gilwilly Industrial Estate, complete with a 15m by 8.5m pool, as well as a fitness room and a space which is variously used as a kids’ club, classroom or for party hire. 

The couple invested their own money alongside a grant from Cumbria Rural Enterprise Agency.

The pool opened in April last year and employs a team of 12 providing swimming lessons for 15 local schools, as well as being a venue for swimming and fitness classes for other community groups.

Woggle Goggle also runs fun sessions with inflatables and other equipment at the weekends and a holiday club, where parents can drop kids off to do a range of activities for the day while they go to work.

Ben says the main aim of the business is to help children learn how to swim, especially as more schools are cutting back on swimming lessons.

"There's a really high proportion of children who can't swim and are not learning to swim, and that's been really, really exaggerated even more because of Covid," says Ben.

"Our aim as a business is to try and make swimming lessons as affordable as possible.”

Ben says the different rooms within the building mean whole schools of children can be bussed to Woggle Goggle and carry out a range of activities, making it more cost-effective.

"While there's a class having a swimming lesson in the pool, there's another group having an English lesson in the classroom and another group having a PE lesson in the fitness room," he says.

"So the idea is that we can cater for a whole school using the whole facility and it's like a day out for them.”

Not far away, another new business, Hamilton’s Outdoor Living, is making a name for itself as an indoor and open air site showcasing and selling luxury wooden gazebos and multipurpose garden rooms.

Customers can tour the gazebos and rooms which are all designed and decked out for different purposes, from somewhere to relax and have a drink, to home offices, gyms, gaming rooms, greenhouses or home business units containing salons and treatment rooms.

Owner Alan Hamilton says the show site is the only one north of Leek, in Staffordshire, and hopes it has cornered the market for high end outdoor living in northern England and Scotland.

The business was a logical step for Alan, who founded Cumbria Quarrying Services with wife Sharon in 2005, which employs 16 people.

It now operates quarries at Bowscar, north of Penrith, Orton Scar, Whitehaven and Lockerbie, southern Scotland, as well as processing the stone so it is ready to use by builders and landscapers.

As the landscapers it worked with were increasingly enquiring about outdoor buildings, Alan saw the opportunity to set up Hamilton’s Outdoor Living, especially given the increased interest in functional garden rooms following the pandemic.

In addition to selling the products, the business can also offer the full package of slab, stonework and gravel, as well as working alongside architects and recommending builders and landscapers.

“I think it’s a place where you can show the products off and people can see that vision,” says Alan.

“We’ve had a lot of positive feedback and when people come in they just say ‘Wow’ because they can see how good it is going to look at their home.

“I think the location helps because it’s in the Lakes and people can come down from Scotland and have a day out and come here at the same time.”