Improved transportation and the ability to get around meant the English could seek jobs that were not available to them before. While many lived in poverty, others rose in status as the previously defined class structure changed.
Employers moved away from their industrial source of wealth. They bought country estates and were often considered landed gentry. Men without noble ties, previously considered lowly, now rose in status on the basis of their wealth. Some built new streets of houses at the edge of town for their skilled workmen and artisans to live in.
Their key employees and managers built villas outside of town too.
(Painting: Apsley house, the home of the Duke of Wellington as it looked in 1816. Villas and homes like this were no longer reserved for titled gentlemen like the Duke by the 1850’s in Britain)