to the industrial revolution being benefactors and founders of a number of places of worship. Another William Pilkington (1765–1831) became a physician and apothecary in St Helens. It is this branch that links Horwich to the founders of Pilkington Glass, his sons being Richard (1795–1869) and William (1800–1872). Industrial Revolution In the 1770s brothers, John and Joseph Ridgway, land agents to the Blundells, moved their bleach works from Bolton to Wallsuches. Their works was the oldest and one of the few stone-built mills in the Bolton borough. The firm was one of the earliest users of chemical bleaching using chlorine. In 1798 the firm installed a Boulton and Watt steam engine. Horwich Vale Printworks, founded in 1799 by the River Douglas, printed cloth using machines and handblocks. On the slopes of Winter Hill, stone was quarried and there were several small collieries and a firebrick and tile works. In 1896 the Montcliffe Colliery was owned by Adam Mason and Son and managed by Joseph Crankshaw and Joseph Kenwright. It employed 26 men underground and seven surface workers getting coal and fireclay from the Mountain coal seam. Crankshaws pipeworks used the fireclay and had had several beehive kilns at their works at Tiger's Clough. In the mid-19th century, cotton mills were built by W. & W. Bennett and Peter Gaskell. Ridgways provided land for the early 19th century Club Houses, a grid pattern development of streets of stone built cottages south of Church Street. Some had basements for hand loom weaving. In 1851 the occupants were crofters, stovers and bleachers. Heavy Industry In 1881 the population of 3,761 lived in 900 houses and had remained stable for fifty years, the arrival of the railway works and other industries including W.T. Taylor's cotton mill resulted in a considerable change to Horwich leading to a rapid increase in population, creating a boom in population by 1891 to 12,850 people, Horwich became a railway town in this period of the Industrial Revolution. Coming with this increased population was a need for more houses, schools, and retail and service industries to provide for this new population. Large areas of former farmland was built on with the creation of vast numbers of brick terraced house streets of Victorian and Edwardian types of two-up two-down for the working class who had arrived from across Britain and Ireland, still used in the 21st century. Many new streets near