Lady Hawkins died in 1619 and was buried in London in the parish church of St Dunstan in the East. In her will, dated 23rd April, 1619, she left £800 ‘for the purchasing of lands or tenements of a yearly value of forty pounds for and towards the perpetual maintenance of a learned and choice preaching divine, the Master, to keep a free school in Kington, in the County of Hereford, and of a learned and discreet Usher under him, for the instructing and teaching of youths and children in literature and good education’.
The school opened on the Feast of St Michael and All Angels, September 29th, 1632, with 62 pupils. Every year since, either Michaelmas Day, or the weekday nearest to it, has been kept as Foundress’ Day, whereon the school goes over to the nearby parish church to give thanks for its foundation and all those who have served in it over three and a half centuries. It was originally decreed that ‘the freedom of the school shall be to boys born in the parishes of Kington, Huntington, and Brilley in the County of Hereford, and to boys born in the parish of Michaelchurch in the County of Radnor, that no women children shall be admitted or boy under the age of six unless he can read his Primer’. Boys, however, from other parishes, (‘Foreigners’) could be admitted as fee payers.
Lady Hawkins’ school is now housed in modern buildings erected in 1962 and 1973, with other buildings erected more recently, almost all of which have been refurbished between 1990 and 1995 to meet the challenges and demands of recent curriculum developments. The original 1600s building is now in use as a private residence.