Christie and Ethel were reconciled in 1934 after this release from prison. He ended his recourse to petty crime but continued to seek out prostitutes. In 1937, Christie and his wife moved into the top-floor flat of 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, then a rather run-down area of London. They moved into the ground-floor flat in December 1938. The house was a three-storey brick end-terrace, built in the 1870s during a period of intensive speculative building in the area that resulted in much jerry-built property, and which had declined into poorly-maintained and unimproved multi-occupancy rentals. Number 10 was of a common design: the ground and first floors each contained a bedroom and living room, with a kitchen/scullery in the adjacent extension but the second-floor flat had two rooms only: a kitchen/living room and a bedroom. Living conditions were "squalid"—the building's occupants shared one outside lavatory, and none of the flats had a bathroom. The street was close to an above-ground section of the Metropolitan line (now the Hammersmith & City and Circle lines), and the train noise would have been "deafening" for the occupants of 10 Rillington Place.