Local living conditions had improved greatly during the Victorian era with the removal of several poorly built cottages that were deemed to be only "hovels" and an end to the endemic "dwarfism" and rickets that had plagued the local children in the early 19th century. A slightly later development still further east in Grimsbury was of larger houses. A lot of cottages what was called 'Waterloo' (today's Waterloo Road), which apparently lay just east of Banbury Bridge to the north of the road, had transformed from the early 19th century so that by 1841 Waterloo was considered one of the better off parts of Grimsbury. Due to Banbury's then boom time Grimsbury's principle expansion occurred between 1852 and 1881, when some 500 houses were built, around Middleton road, Causeway, Merton Street, Duke Street, and North Street.