His wealth was based landed estates centred on Penkridge in southern Staffordshire, mines at Great Wyrley and Bloxwich, quarries and sandpits, brick yards and residential housing, mainly in Walsall.
In the Middle Ages, Dunston was subject ecclesiastically to the large and important Collegiate Church of St. Michael at Penkridge, a royal peculiar whose dean was from 1215 the Archbishop of Dublin.
Baron Hatherton allowed to trains run across his land on the condition that two trains a day stopped at Penkridge.
As this suggests, he was of Cavalier sympathies, and an important counterweight locally to Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, lord of the manor of Penkridge, who was an important leader of the Puritan and Parliamentary cause, who was killed during the siege of Lichfield Cathedral in 1643.