[2] Ashton studied medicine at King's College London, doing his practical work at Westminster Hospital Medical School (now Imperial College School of Medicine), and qualified in 1939 with a specialisation in pathology.

[3] In 1941 he became a pathologist for Kent and Canterbury Hospital, leaving in 1945 to serve in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

[1] After demobilisation in 1947 he was invited to become Director of Pathology at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, a position he held for 30 years.

He was the first to report on cases in the U.K. of children with larval granulomatosis of the retina from intra-ocular nematode infestation by larvae of Toxocara canis.

[1] He won the Buchanan Medal of the Royal Society in 1996 and served as president of five different ophthalmological associations before his death on 4 January 2000.