THE role of the Cockhedge area as the industrial heart of Warrington in the 19th century is highlighted in a new book.

As reported in last week’s Yester Years, Janice Hayes has published a new history of the town focusing on its industry.

Called Warrington at Work: People and Industries through The Years, it charts the story of business and industry in the borough right up to the modern day.

And one of the features is on Cockhedge, which along with Bank Quay, became one of the town’s two major industrial centres in the mid 19th century.

Janice said: “By the early 19th century, Cockhedge was fast becoming Warrington’s second major industrial site with Stub’s tool factory joined by a cotton mill and glassworks.

“By the 1840s Warrington was already engaged in fustian (or velvet) cutting and even when the cotton industry was at its peak in the 1920s, only six per cent of the town’s workforces was employed in the industry but almost 20 per cent of the town’s women workers worked in its mill.

“As its peak in the 1820s, the town had more than 20 firms engaged in cotton spinning or weaving.

“The smaller mills could not survive the cotton crisis caused by the American Civil War of the 1860s and only Armitage and Rigby’s Cockhedge Mill remained.”

By the late 1890s, terraced housing was crammed around the mill, which dominated Cockhedge and the nearby Central Station.

On February 20, 1896, Cockhedge Mill was badly damaged by a fire, which needed the attention of 17 firemen and both the town’s steam fire engines.

Tanning and brewing then started to take over as some of the major industries of the town.

The new book includes many fascinating pictures from the past two centuries from the firms people worked in to the workers who were employed there.

And it also looks to recent changes in industry and business and how the working life for many people in the town has evolved in the 21st century.

  •  Warrington at Work: People and Industries through The Years published by Amberley is out now.