Linwood and Neilston were accused of witchcraft. However, they passed certain tests which would disprove them to be witches. In 1697, Christian Shaw of Lambroughton succeeded in convincing a Minister that she was a victim of witchcraft. A Commission of Enquiry, which included the Laird of Glanderston, was appointed to investigate. As a result of the investigation, later known as the Paisley Witch Trials, four women and three men were arrested and eventually condemned to death and executed at Paisley. The Minister of Neilston Church, the Reverend David Brown, officiated at the hanging; he preached to them before the execution "beseeching them to turn to God, God having exercised a great deal of long-suffering towards them". The foundations of a textile industry in Neilston were laid by the monks of Paisley Abbey who mastered the local woollen trade in the Middle Ages. Neilston became a centre for cotton and calico bleaching and printing in the 18th century. This developed into a spinning and dying industry and continued into the early 20th century. Bleachfields and textile processing brought rapid socioeconomic growth to the village. Neilston was one of the earliest centres of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution; the process of bleaching linens was introduced into Neilston in 1765, and a mill in the parish was the second erected in Scotland. By 1780, cotton manufacturing and bleaching had become the main industry in Neilston; the clear busy waters of the River Levern being well suited for power and processing. In the "Old" Statistical Account of Scotland (1792), compiled under the direction of Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, Neilston was noted to have two cotton mills employing together more than 300 people, over half of them children. The local Minister was concerned for the children's welfare, remarking on how they missed school to work in the mills where their lungs would be filled with cotton fluff and their skin spoiled by machine oil. Crofthead Mill (known locally as Neilston Mill) was established in 1792. It was one of seven large cotton mills on the banks of the River Levern between Neilston and Dovecothall, and although it closed for business in the early 1990s, it is the only industrial structure from this period still standing. Because of the large size of the complex, coupled with its short distance from the main residential core of Neilston, it was described in 1830, at the peak