Thomas Sutton (1532-1611) was a British civil servant and businessman. For much of his life he held the prestigious role of Master of the Ordnance in the North, which meant that he was responsible for military supplies and fortification in the north of England. He was also lord of the manors of Whickham and Gateshead, close to Newcastle, so gained much of his wealth from the coal mines in the areas.

He bought Howard House from the Earl of Suffolk, which occupied the site of a former Carthusian Monastery on the outskirts of the City of London. Although dissolved by Henry VIII, parts of the monastery still survived.

When Sutton died in 1611, he left part of his fortune to be invested in establishing a hospital on the site for 80 impoverished gentlemen and a school for 40 boys. This was to be known as the Hospital of King James in Charterhouse, although it later became called 'Sutton's Hospital in Charterhouse' (see London Charterhouse).

This was the origin of the famous Charterhouse School - one of the best known English public schools in the country, which relocated to Godalming, Surrey, in 1872.

The London buildings were badly damaged by bombs during the Second World War, but were restored during the 1950s.