Oldham rose to prominence during the 19th century as an international centre of
textile manufacture. It was a
boomtown of the
Industrial Revolution, and amongst the first ever
industrialised towns, rapidly becoming "one of the most important centres of cotton and textile industries in England", spinning
Oldham counts, the coarser counts of cotton. Oldham's soils were too thin and poor to sustain
crop growing, and so for decades prior to
industrialisation the area was used for grazing
sheep, which provided the raw material for a local
woollen weaving trade. The first mill, Lees Hall, was built by William Clegg in about 1778. Within a year, 11 other mills had been constructed, but by 1818 there were only 19 of these privately owned mills. This was due in a large part to the formation of
limited liability companies known as
Oldham Limiteds. In 1851, over 30% of Oldham's population was employed within the textile sector, compared to 5% across
Great Britain. At its zenith, it was the most productive
cotton spinning mill town in the world. Textile Mill was one of a cluster of mills built in Chadderton in 1882, it was designed by
Potts, Pickup & Dixon. By 1871 the town of Oldham had more
spindles than any country in the world except the United States, and in 1909, was spinning more cotton than France and Germany combined. By 1911 there were 16.4 million spindles in Oldham, compared with a total of 58 million in the United Kingdom and 143.5 million in the world; in 1928, with the construction of the UK's largest textile factory Oldham reached its manufacturing zenith. The industry peaked in 1912, when it produced 8 billion yards of cloth. The Great War of 1914–1918 halted the supply of raw cotton, and the British government encouraged its colonies to build mills to spin and weave cotton. The war over, Lancashire never regained its markets. The independent mills were struggling. Textile Mill was closed in 1927. The
Bank of England set up the
Lancashire Cotton Corporation in 1929 to attempt to rationalise and save the industry. Textile Mill, Chadderton bought by the LCC, after
World War II, and used it for storage of baled waste for export, and one of the 53 mills that survived through to 1950, when it was partly burnt out. Courtaulds sold it in 1966. The use for cotton waste continued. In 1996 it was reduced to two storeys. ==Architecture==