Oliver Heywood (9 September 1825 – 1892) was an English banker and philanthropist. Born in Irlam O'Th' Height, Lancashire, the son of Benjamin Heywood, and educated at Eton College, Heywood joined the family business, Heywood's Bank in the 1840s. Heywood sponsored many philanthropic causes, including Manchester Mechanics' Institute, Chetham's Hospital, Manchester Grammar School and Owens College. He was selected as High Sheriff of Lancashire for 1888. He married Eleanor Barton, daughter of Richard Watson Barton, on 7 September 1847; they had no children. Life On 9 September 1825, Oliver Heywood was born in Irlams O' Th' Height near Manchester, England to the prominent English banker and well known philanthropist Sir Benjamin Heywood and his wife Sophia Ann Robinson. Located in St. Ann's Square, the Heywood bank was one of the more recognisable bank names in Manchester but had suffered some tarnishing of its image from the 1700s. Heywood was educated in Liverpool at St. Domingo House, at the time, a boarding school for boys that was housed by a large mansion. He then was educated at Mr. Mertz's School in Manchester and then at Eton College for his higher education. Heywood followed the finishing of his formal education by travelling abroad before beginning his very promising career in the family banking business. On 7 September 1847, Heywood married Eleanor Barton, the daughter of a merchant from Pendlebury named Richard Watson Barton. The couple first lived in Acresfield in the house where Heywood had been born in Irlams O' Th' Height near Manchester. However, after the death of Sir Benjamin Heywood in 1865, the couple moved into his house in nearby Claremont. Eleanor died childless in September 1877. Heritage The Heywood family fortune had ties to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Oliver Heywood's great-grandfather, Benjamin Heywood, was one of the family that had lived in Liverpool, where they owned a shipping company in the 1700s. This transported goods made in Manchester to West Africa, where they were traded for African slaves who were then taken to Barbados. There the slaves were traded in turn for sugar and cotton, which were landed in Liverpool on the ships' return voyage. The slave trade was lucrative but eventually recognised as unscrupulous. It was from this activity that Benjamin Heywood had been able to establish the family bank in Manchester in 1788. Business In 1845, Heywood joined his father's banking company, called Sir Benjamin Heywood &