The Hills of Hawkstone have long-since left their ancestral home of 350 years. Their name is still well known in Shropshire, exemplified by the proud figure of the Peninsula War hero, Rowland 1st Baron Hill (and, later, 1st Viscount Hill) of Hawkstone and Almarez who stands at the top of his Greek Doric column in Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury, surveying a great swathe of the county with which his family was long associated.

The 1st Viscount had been born at Prees Hall (q.v.) and spent much of his civilian life at Hardwicke Grange (q.v.). He was unmarried and, at his death, his titles passed by special remainder to his nephew. Just as the 2nd Viscount had reason to be grateful to his bachelor uncle for his peerage, two earlier generations of Hill nephews had unmarried uncles to thank for both the acquisition and the aggrandisement of their Hawkstone inheritance.

The acquisition of Hawkstone had come about in the sixteenth century, when a scion of the family from Court of Hill (q.v.) in south Shropshire, Sir Rowland Hill (1492–1561), bought the manor of Hawkstone from Edward Twynho in 1549 and began to build up an estate which at its height included some 1,181 tenants. Hill was a textile merchant, a creditor to Henry VIII and also a purchaser of lands which fell vacant after the Dissolution. In 1549 he became the first Protestant Lord Mayor of London, a distinction that his descendants were to commemorate in the so-called Obelisk within the park at Hawkstone – a giant column of 1795, surmounted by his statue. Of the appearance of his house on the north Shropshire estate there seems to be no record.

His nephew, Humphrey, succeeded him at Hawkstone, and the estate descended through three generations of Rowland Hills before being inherited by ‘The Great Hill’. This was Richard Hill (1654–1727) who, having taken deacon’s orders, took a career change which led him into military and diplomatic roles. Perhaps his most lucrative appointment was as Deputy Paymaster to King William III in 1688–1696, and, in due course, his wealth established three nephews with landed estates including the ancestral seat at Hawkstone. One nephew, Thomas Harwood (later Hill) ultimately gained Tern – the core of the present Attingham Park, whilst another, Samuel Barbour (later Hill), received Shenstone, Staffordshire.