Crompton's damp climate provided the ideal conditions for cotton spinning to be carried out without the cotton drying and breaking, and newly developed 19th century mechanisation optimised cotton spinning for mass production for the global market. When suitable land in nearby Oldham (then the largest and most productive mill town in the world) had become scarce in the 1860s, there was a mill building boom in Shaw and Crompton, giving rise to the area as major mill town. The local townscape became dominated by distinctive rectangular brick-built mills, and its former villages and hamlets agglomerated as a single town around these factories. Shaw and Crompton railway station and a goods yard was opened in 1863, allowing improved transportation of textile goods and raw materials to and from the township. Neighbouring Royton had begun to encroach upon the township's southern boundary, forming a continuous urban cotton-spinning district with Oldham, Lees and Chadderton—the Oldham parliamentary constituency—which was responsible for 13% of the world's cotton production.