Wrightson was born in Haughton-le-Skerne in County Durham, the son of Thomas Wrightson (1800–1872) and Rebecca Gilchrist "née" Potter (1803–1884) and was the brother of Rebecca Ingram Head, Mary Wrightson, the Revd. William Garmondsway Wrightson and the Conservative politician Sir Thomas Wrightson. In 1863 Wrightson had been a foremost student at the Royal Agricultural College following which he was a professor of agriculture at the same college for 15 years (1864–1879). In 1868 he was initiated as a Freemason into the Cotteswold Lodge No 593. His interest in agricultural education was developed following a tour of Europe while acting as the Royal Agricultural Society's representative at the Vienna International Exposition of 1873; he was probably the first to introduce grass silage to Britain (or "sour hay", as he called it). It was Wrightson's view that agricultural education necessitated practical hands-on skills to be developed along with the scientific, and to that end he made good use of the 535 acres he had at Charford Manor, where he also lived and brought up his 11 children, at the same time stating, in a dig against other similar but less-endowed colleges, that "a sufficient farm is essential to an institution which pretends to teach farming."