Thomas Ashton (8 December 1818 – 21 January 1898) was an English cotton manufacturer and philanthropist. Early life Ashton was born on 8 December 1818 at Flowery Fields House, Hyde, then in Cheshire, sixth child to Thomas Ashton (1775–1845) and his wife, Harriet, née Booth. The Ashton family owned mills in Hyde, Godley and Gerrards Wood which employed many hundreds of people. They were among the earliest cotton pioneers in Hyde. From 1800 they worked as a family business with mills at Gerrards Wood and Wilson Brook at Godley. Six brothers were involved in the business which, as well as coal and cotton, also established the calico printing works at Newton Bank. In 1823 the brothers separated, Samuel and Thomas taking the major shares; the former establishing himself at Apethorn Mill and soon after building Woodley Mill, while Thomas ran the factory at the Hollow. The Ashtons were particularly noted for running mills that did both spinning and weaving, a successful practice when most mills concentrated on one process. Career Thomas had inherited the cotton mills and the merchants' business in Manchester, 1845, and maintained the expansion programme initiated by his father, making the Flowery Fields mills complex the largest industrial concern in the district. The mills were considered to be 'The best of their class in the country, thoroughly equipped and conducted with every regard for the comfort and welfare of the operatives' (Bedford, Ashtons of Hyde). Not only did Thomas carry on the Ashton family tradition he had inherited as an employer—that of an employer who realised his responsibilities to the men and women who worked for him—he improved on it. He enlarged the mill school, built a church at Flowery Fields, and expanded the village built by his father; he also established scholarships at the Hyde Mechanics' Institute and the technical school which enabled students to go to Owens College and to the Manchester Mechanics Institute. Care of his employees had always been an important factor to him, and during the cotton famine, when many mills were closed and most employers ruined, Thomas Ashton made sure that his mills never stopped. In spite of immense personal and financial loss, he kept his workforce in full employment by setting them to work in his brickworks and building Throstle Bank Mill. Following his move to Ford Bank in Didsbury, Ashton maintained his strong links with the town of Hyde.