During the Industrial Revolution many of the townships in the region experienced fairly rapid population growth, although Flixton remained an exception, its population growing by only 22 per cent between 1801 and 1851. This was in stark contrast to Altrincham (165%), Bowdon (242%) and Stretford (238%), and is attributed to the emigration of villagers to more industrialised areas like Manchester, and the agricultural depression of the 1830s and 1840s. The domestic production of textiles, popular during the 17th and early 18th centuries in Flixton and other nearby townships, and the newer factory-based system which replaced it, had disappeared in Altrincham by the middle of the 19th century. Weaving continued in Flixton, although within ten years of the construction of Flixton Cotton Mills in 1851, domestic textile production had ended. In nearby Urmston, 28 per cent of the township's population was in 1851 engaged in textile work, but the area did not experience the level of industrialisation seen in towns like Ashton-under-Lyne, east of Manchester, where 16 mills were built between 1815 and 1829, doubling the population. The reasons for this reliance on land rather than industry are unclear.