Howell's School, Denbigh

Howell's School, Denbigh had one of the more remarkable funding origins of any Welsh school. Its roots trace back to 1537, when Thomas Howell, a Welsh merchant trading out of Bristol, London and Seville, left 12,000 gold ducats to the Drapers' Company in London, to be used every year to provide dowries for young women. More than three centuries later, in 1853, an Act of Parliament allowed the Court of Chancery to redirect part of that ancient trust towards founding girls' schools in Wales — and Howell's School, Denbigh opened in 1859 as a direct result, with a sister school later opening at Llandaff in 1860.

The school began with places for 55 boarders and 50 day girls, organised into three houses: Haulfryn, Bodgwilym and Minffordd. It grew substantially over the following decades: a new wing containing extra classrooms, music rooms, a gymnasium and an assembly hall was added in 1914, and a further major building programme in 1931 added a Great Hall, dining hall and kitchens, along with three additional houses — St George's, St Andrew's and St Patrick's.

Howell's School closed in 2013, ending more than 150 years of girls' education on the site, but the buildings did not stand empty for long: a new co-educational independent school, Myddelton College, opened there in 2016, continuing the site's long association with private education in Denbigh.

Howell's School was established in 1859 under the terms of a charitable trust set up in 1537 by Thomas Howell, a wealthy Welsh wool merchant, for the education of poor Welsh girls. By the time the school opened its doors in Denbigh, it had grown into a substantial boarding and day school, and it went on to educate generations of girls from across North Wales and beyond over more than 150 years.

The school occupied a prominent purpose-built campus on the edge of Denbigh, and its closure in 2013 — a casualty of falling rolls and rising costs affecting independent schools across the UK — marked the end of a long chapter in the town's educational history. The buildings and grounds remain a recognisable Denbigh landmark, their striking Victorian architecture a reminder of the ambition behind the original foundation.