Brook Bolt Works on Bag Lane dating from 1856 survives and is a Grade II listed building. Coal had been mined for several hundred years in numerous shallow shafts and adits, but took on greater importance when in 1776 Robert Vernon Atherton leased the coal rights to Thomas Guest from Leigh and John Fletcher from Bolton. In 1845 the era of deep mining commenced with the sinking of Fletcher's Lover's Lane pit at Howe Bridge. The Crombouke Day-Eye, a drift mine accessing the shallow Brassy and Crombouke mines, opened in 1870 and closed in 1907. (A coal seam was referred to as a "mine" in this part of Lancashire.) By the early 1870s Fletcher, Burrows and Company's Howe Bridge Colliery, the biggest of the three Howe Bridge pits, was sunk to the Black & White, or Seven Foot mine. The pit closed in 1959. Gibfield Colliery, situated alongside the Bolton and Leigh Railway, was working in 1829, and coal was mined from the Trencherbone mine. Forty years later a shaft was sunk to Arley Mine. The pit closed in 1963. In September 1913 the first pit head baths in the country were opened at Gibfield. Chanters Colliery was in Hindsford, where shafts were sunk to the Trencherbone mine in 1854. In the late 1890s shafts were deepened to to reach the Arley mine. Atherton had its share of mining disasters — on 11 February 1850 five men died in a gas explosion caused by a lighted candle at Gibfield, and 27 men died at Lovers Lane Colliery after a firedamp explosion caused by blown-out shot on 28 March 1872. On 6 March 1957 eight men died at Chanters Colliery after an explosion of gas. Chanters closed in 1966 bringing the era of deep coal mining in the town to an end. In 1908, the Lancashire and Cheshire Coal Owners Association opened Howe Bridge Mines Rescue Station. The cotton mills grew out of a cottage spinning and weaving industry that was widespread across the district. As industrialisation gathered pace, local weavers felt threatened by the advent of powered looms, and in April 1812 a mob smashed the machines and burnt down a new factory, Westhoughton Mill, in neighbouring Westhoughton. For this, the Luddites, three men and a boy of 14, were tried at Lancaster Assizes and hanged. Fustian was woven and after 1827 silk also was brought from Manchester. In 1938