The university's history is defined less by its founder's vision than by the family who followed him. After Lord Percival's fatal accident, the trusteeship passed to his younger brother, a clergyman named Edmund Ashworth who had none of his sibling's commercial instincts but possessed a genuine belief in education for the non-aristocratic classes. Under Edmund's stewardship, Ashworth became an early adopter of formal business curricula in the 1880s, one of the first English institutions to offer a diploma in what was then called commercial management.

The equestrian focus emerged not from Edmund's preferences but from geography and necessity. The land was too hilly and the soil too poor for profitable farming, but it was excellent grazing country, and the stables already existed from Lord Percival's personal use. By 1900, Ashworth had a small riding club; by 1920, the club had become a formal polo team; by 1950, the team had become the university's most visible asset and its primary recruitment tool for students of a certain background.

The university avoided the worst of the post-war financial crises by leasing portions of its land to a commercial stud farm and converting one of its ancillary buildings into a boarding kennel for the dogs of wealthy alumni, a bizarre but profitable sideline that persisted until the 1980s. The money from those ventures funded the construction of the modern equestrian centre in 1973 and the business school annex in 1991.

The naming traditions at Ashworth are deliberately peculiar. The university's seven main buildings are named not for distinguished alumni or donors but for the seven horses Lord Percival owned at the time of his death, a decision made by Edmund Ashworth as a memorial to his brother. The library is known as the Saladin Hall, after the stallion that threw Percival on his final ride, a choice that the current administration has never officially explained but which students interpret as a joke about untamed knowledge. The dining hall is the Galahad Room, and the main lecture theatre is the Bucephalus, after Alexander's horse.

The university's governance structure retains a number of archaic positions, including a Master of the Horse (a ceremonial role that oversees the equestrian centre but has no authority over academic matters) and a Keeper of the Seal (a faculty member responsible for maintaining the university's mace and various other ceremonial objects). These positions are appointed rather than elected and tend to go to the longest-serving faculty members regardless of their competence.

Enrolment hovers around 2,500 students, with a roughly even split between undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The student body is predominantly from the south of England, with a small but significant contingent of international students, primarily from countries with strong equestrian traditions – Ireland, Australia, Argentina, and the United States. The university maintains a specific policy of admitting students without family wealth on the basis of riding ability, which is the source of some tension with the larger cohort of students who pay full fees and consider the sport a social entitlement rather than a competitive skill.