The town was expanding rapidly with the growth of the shoe trade mechanisation, and the need for workers to be in factories rather than in their own little workshops, at the rear of the cottages. The oldest workshops we have information about, were at Ebenezer Terrace built in 1861, and demolished in 1986.

With this development, the factories needed more and more workers, and the decline in agriculture was bringing people into Rushden from the surrounding villages, and further afield, as can be seen from the census records.