By the 1830s, Cockhedge featured a small glassworks, a leading file manufacturer and a cotton mill. While Warrington had one of the first steam-powered cotton mills in the north west, it never became a major cotton-producing town. Only the Cockhedge mill survived the cotton crisis of the 1860s (caused by the American Civil War) and it also survived a major fire in the 1870s. By the post First World War depression of the 1920s, it employed almost one fifth of the town’s female workers. By the 1950s the mill, run by Armitage and Rigby, began to fall into terminal decline as a result of cheap cotton imports. In the 1980s, Warrington’s town planners had started to favour heavy industry moving away from the town centre while the retail sector was booming. Charterhall Properties developed the new Cockhedge Shopping Centre which opened in 1984 and is still flourishing today.
