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Blue Plaque 7 - The Free Grammar School
This lady too, was connected royally. Mistress Hodges had been a member of the household of Susan, Countess of Denbigh. Her name is found in House of Lords Journals, (March 1643) as having been sent from Oxford to London for child bed linen for the Queen, prior to the birth of Princess Henrietta. She accompanied the Queen and Lady Denbigh to France and appears to have remained with her until the latter’s death in 1652. At Stoke Golding, a house was purchased and it is believed that the first school was what is now known as ‘The Old Grammar School’, in Station Road. A document dated 7th April 1827, described Lord Denbigh as Sole Governor of the Stoke Grammar School. Sir Henry Firebrace’s grand daughter, Hester, married Basil, 4th Earl of Denbigh in 1695.
The administration of the school in 1866 was by a board of governors comprising Rev C. Fielding (Denbigh family name), Dr F. Temple (Headmaster of Rugby School, and later Archbishop of Canterbury), Rev J. Fisher (Rector of Higham-on-the-Hill, grandfather of a future Archbishop of Canterbury), C. Bracebridge, F. Wollaston, R. Baxter and Rev T. Bourne (Vicar of Stoke Golding). The Board accepted Mr R. Baxter’s kind offer to use a part of ‘The Workmen’s Hall and Reading Room’ as school premises, moving there from Station Road in 1866. Mr Baxter had built those premises for the use of the village people in the grounds of ‘The Old Hall which he had vacated and demolished. It is the building of character in High Street in front of the present school. The Old Schoolhouse in Station Road was largely rebuilt in 1841 and additionally provided the residence of the Schoolmaster who was also the Curate in charge of the Parish (Stoke was officially a chapelry of Hinckley until 1865). When the school moved to the Workmen’s Hall the old house was let to a Mrs Beeby, who, in her notice to quit, described it as ‘Ivy House’. Shortly afterwards, it became for many years a private High School for Girls. The premises were finally sold by the Hester Hodges Trustees in 1952. With the changes over the years in the administration of the School, the Hester Hodges Foundation had begun to separate and in 1926 ceased to meet with the School managers. Today, however the Foundation still devotes at least half of its income to the School and the rest to ancillary educational purposes. The Foundation originally obtained the greater part of its income from a farm purchased in Earl Shilton. This was sold in 1950. Of Hester Hodges? She seems to have been alive in 1680, when Sir Henry Firebrace made his will leaving her £20 to buy herself a ring. The date of her death is not recorded and no will has been found.
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The origins of the present Church of England School, known as St Margaret’s School go back
to the year 1678. In that year, by indenture, Mistress Hester Hodges, spinster,
gave £500 (to which other contributions were added) ‘to buy land to form a
Free Grammar School and maintenance of a Schoolmaster in Holy Orders for it’.
The school was to be for male children, in the principles of the Church of
England and of obedience to the Government, and to include the teaching of
English, Latin and Greek (hence the description of Grammar School). It became
formally known as ‘The Free Grammar School of The Foundation of Hester Hodges
at Stoke Golding’. Hester Hodges was the aunt of the first wife of that
notable resident of Stoke and courtier to the last three Stuart Kings, Sir Henry Firebrace. She made a condition that the power of ‘collating a
schoolmaster should be in Henry Firebrace and his two sons and their descendants
forever’.
