Estates
After his father's death on 29 October 1815, and despite his position as the fifth son, Thomas inherited his father's estates in Lancashire and Cheshire. Two elder brothers, both named Joseph, had died in infancy and two others, Humphrey and John, had both died before their father.
By 12 November 1819, he is recorded as selling the advowson of the parish of St Bartholomew's Church, Wilmslow, to Edward Vigor Fox for £6,000. This gave the right to nominate the rector when the parish became vacant, and was a right conferred by lordship of the manor in many cases. Selling that right was legal, so long as the post was not already vacant. However, in this case it appears that Trafford and Fox drew up the sale after they learned that Joseph Bradshaw, the incumbent, was close to death. The sale was concluded at ten to three in the afternoon, and Bradshaw died at half past eleven the same night. At the time of the sale, Trafford was major-commandant of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, and Fox was a lieutenant in the same force.
Fox's subsequent nomination of George Uppleby as rector, on 30 December 1819, was contested by the Bishop of Chester, and the case wound through the courts during the 1820s. Eventually on 3 June 1829, the House of Lords heard Fox's appeal of earlier decisions voiding the appointment. The Lords could not find any evidence that Uppleby had conspired with Trafford and Fox to buy the appointment (an offence known as simony) and so they ruled in favor of Fox and Trafford.
Slater's Directory for 1845 names Thomas Ayres as Sir T. J. de Trafford's land agent in Stretford. In Edward Twycross's The Mansions of England and Wales (1847), Thomas is noted as the owner of Trafford Hall in the parish of Eccles on the southern bank of the Irwell, 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Manchester. The mansion is described as built of stone with a front featuring a classical portico with columns and a pediment. Tithe maps from the mid-19th century show that Thomas owned more than 700 plots in the Bollin valley near Wilmslow, amounting to about 430 acres (1.7 km2).
Thomas is recorded as having divided the Manors of Trafford and Stretford, giving land including a portion of Croston Manor to his son John Randolphus. In 1853, John Randolphus applied for a £5,000 government loan to drain lands in "Croston, Penwortham, Wigan." In 1874, John Randolphus reunited Croston Manor for the first time since 1318 by purchasing the remainder from trustees of Thomas Norris.
It appears that Thomas Trafford was alert to the financial opportunities presented by the burgeoning coal mining industry. He leased mining rights at the Pemberton Four Feet Mine in Hindley to a partnership of Byrom, Taylor and Byrom for 33 years from 24 December 1849. Trafford was entitled to rent of "£75 per foot per Cheshire acre, and £100 per annum at the least." This venture evidently did not prove as profitable as the lessors had hoped. Within three years the partnership was bankrupt and the mine lease was auctioned on 27 October 1852.
