IT could soon be set for a new look.

But this week, we are taking a look back at the history of Cockhedge.

As we reported last month, a major overhaul of Cockhedge Shopping Centre is being planned, with some of it set to be demolished to make way for housing.

Well what a difference 100 years makes.

This picture dates back to 1918 but remarkably some of the structures from it remain in place today.

Cockhedge Mill was one of the focal points of Warrington’s industrial heritage.

So when planners allowed the site to be turned into a shopping centre in the 1980s, they wanted to preserve some of that history.

Hence the original cast-iron girders seen on the roof were salvaged and used in the new design.

The building is featured in a new book published this year, Warrington in 50 Buildings.

Written by Culture Warrington’s heritage boss Janice Hayes, it tells the history of the town through the buildings which are most famous and have the most interesting stories.

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.

The old mill was demolished and it was these remaining girders which had supported the roofs of the old weaving sheds which were saved and given a new lease of life as the architectural feature of the new shopping arcade.

Janice Hayes' book Warrington in 50 Buildings is out now. It is available in bookshops across Warrington priced £14.99.

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