At this date the family can be identified as living by the estuary of the River Lune, near Lancaster, where they owned the manor of Heton-in-Lonsdale from which they took their name. They enlarged their holdings over the next 250 years in this area of north Lancashire, holding various public appointments, and in the 13th century two successive generations of the head of the family were of sufficient substance to receive knighthoods. Thereafter the estate was dispersed amongst several sons and no member of the family subsequently held a title. Finally, on the death of William de Heton in 1387 most of the lands in north Lancashire were inherited by his two daughters and, on their marriages, passed out of the hands of the Heton family.
However, two generations earlier in 1309,a younger son, John de Heton had been granted the manor of Heton-under-Horwich in south Lancashire by the Baron of Manchester. This manor, which had been carved out of the former forest of Horwich, was a township in the parish of Deane near Bolton, Lancs. and together with the remnants of the Heton lands in Lonsdale formed the estate which the family were to hold for the next 260 years, and became the area in which their various descendants settled and multiplied up to the present time.
From the early 14th century until the middle of the 16th century the Hetons prospered on their lands near Horwich, increasing their holdings by a marriage in 1398 to a Billinge heiress, which brought the manor of Birchley near Wigan into Heton ownership. In the 1500s a long series of disputes and litigation between various members of the family was exploited by an unscrupulous neighbour who, by playing off members of the family against one another, was able eventually to acquire the bulk of the Heaton freehold estates from the young heir in 1570.
Although the freehold land passed into the hands of other families, many Heatons, who had previously farmed their land as tenants, found their situation little changed and continued for many generations to occupy their lands as lessees. From the late 16th century, these yeoman farmers worked to increase the productivity of their land and conduct their domestic textile businesses. From 1790 onwards the Industrial Revolution was launched in Lancashire by these men, some of whom succeeded and others failed.
For 150 years Heaton entrepreneurs were engaged in the cotton industry in Bolton and other towns and several of them established thriving businesses, including the largest private cotton spinning company in the UK in the early 20th century. With the later decline in the textile industry in Lancashire members of the family, in their hundreds, spread throughout the county and elsewhere in search of jobs in the new industries. Dispersal of the family in small numbers had begun at a very early date, principally to London, and this increased with emigration abroad in the 19th and early 20th centuries and Heaton descendants can now be found in many parts of the UK and overseas, although the concentration is undoubtedly still in south Lancashire.