James Williamson, Baron Ashton

The son of a Lancaster painter and decorator, Williamson received a good education at Lancaster's Royal Grammar School and at a private school in Cheshire. When his father died in 1879, he took over the firm with his elder brother, but within four years, Williamson had bought him out.

By 1887, he was making linoleum for floors, building his Lune Mills factory into a huge operation employing 4,000 people at its peak before the First World War. A paternalistic employer, Williamson was reluctant to sack his staff in a downturn. But equally he paid low wages and repeatedly resisted efforts to unionise his workforce. Independent Labour Party members sacked from his works for their agitation would find it difficult to obtain work elsewhere. From 1886 to 1895, Williamson was a Liberal MP, and bought a peerage with a £10,000 donation to party funds. Generous to his native Lancaster, he built the local town hall and gave £500,000 to the town. He was still running the firm to within a week of his death in 1930. At the time, it was facing serious competition from America and needed extensive modernisation.

Williamson left £10.5m in his estate though he died intestate, then a record in intestacy. That was equivalent to about 0.27% of the then £3.9bn net national income. In today's terms, the wealth figure would be £2.9bn.