Harrow A to Z

By Don Walter

Harrow A to Z' is for anyone interested in the borough's local history. Twenty-six entertaining subjects are covered, from archery to Zeppelins, including along the way personalities, buildings, local institutions and industries. The book is fully illustrated with over 100 old and new photographs, drawings and engravings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jan 20, 2005
• ISBN: 9780750953160

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Introduction

As even the quickest glance at its contents will reveal, this book is most definitely not an A to Z of Harrow history in the way that a geographical gazetteer comprehensively lists every city, town and village. Rather it is a collection of 26 pieces about certain aspects of our town’s rich and colourful past.

That these pieces are presented alphabetically rather than chronologically stems from the fact that they began life as a somewhat unusual – but, in the event, highly popular – series of articles in Harrow’s local paper, the Harrow Observer. At the time of their publication, many readers commented that they would happily read more about the series’ varied topics so, for this edition, every piece has been considerably extended – and, as you can see, fully illustrated from my own (and the borough’s) photographic archives.

Each piece should be of interest in itself. Nevertheless, if read together, they will also provide an intriguing, if inevitably selective, portrait of Harrow life over a number of centuries.

Harrow’s history is, of course, a good deal longer than the events recorded here. Our parish church of St Mary’s, Harrow on the Hill, for example, was founded as early as 1087, and there is ample evidence that it was preceded by a Saxon church on the same site where, almost certainly, pagan rites were performed in even earlier times.

By the appearance in about 1086 of Domesday Book, William the Conqueror’s amazing record of the lands he had conquered, the Hill was already a sizeable community. Although only one of countless manors in the land, Harrow may well have held a special significance for the Norman king in that the Lordship of the Manor was then held by Archbishop Lanfranc, who was not only the monarch’s Archbishop of Canterbury but also a close personal friend. (Subsequent archbishops, in fact, were to retain the Harrow Manor right up to the reign of King Henry VIII.)

According to Domesday, there were at least 117 people living on the archbishop’s manor, including a priest, three knights, seven vassals (the knight’s tenants), 102 villeins (who owed service to the lord), two cottagers and two serfs. There may even have been an early Flambard among them for, as is revealed later in the book, the name is one of the very oldest in our history.

One mystery remains – in these early years where did the archbishop himself reside when holding court within his manor? After all, Headstone Manor, which is known to have been built for the archbishops, was not actually completed until about 1340. Informed opinion now favours a residence somewhere in the Sudbury area but, in reality, no site has ever been established beyond shadow of doubt.

Although the subject is not covered in this particular volume, it is nevertheless worth recalling that King Henry III granted an annual fair and a weekly market to Harrow as early as 1261. Both these activities were held on the open ground we now call the Church Fields and, because they attracted the occasional unscrupulous trader and lightfingered customer, it was found necessary to build a court-house on adjoining land. Amazingly enough, this building still remains – in an alleyway off West Street leading to the Fields. It is, however, virtually unknown to the majority of local residents because for decades it has formed part of a local plastics company. Possibly, too, it origins have been obscured by the name by which it was known for centuries, the Pye House. Though this suggests some sort of bake-house, the name is actually a corruption of the Norman French ‘pieds poudreux’, which roughly translates as dusty-footed – an apt enough description of those who made the journey to the markets over what can only have been the crudest of tracks.

The Pye House, off West Street, from an engraving dated 1795.

Given that experts have dated what remains of the court-house to around 1350, the Pye House may well challenge Headstone Manor for the title of the borough’s second oldest surviving building.

By comparison, the present Harrow School, whose origins are recalled in our first chapter, is a relative newcomer. I write the ‘present’ Harrow School quite deliberately for late nineteenth-century researches have conclusively established that John Lyon, once credited as the school’s founder, is far more likely to have re-founded an existing school by endowing it with revenues from some of the many acres he owned both locally and in London.

Scholars can still only guess exactly when this earlier school was started, but a Court Roll of Harrow Manor dated May 1475 makes reference to a school ‘inside the churchyard’ while, almost one hundred years earlier, another manorial record states that one John Intowne was punished because ‘he delivered his son William into remote parts to learn the Liberal Arts’, which seems to suggest that young William could have acquired such knowledge on home ground! In the event, today’s ‘original’ school building – the left-hand wing of the so-called Old Schools – dates from only 1615, some years after the death of both John Lyon and his widow, Joan.

If the original Old Schools may not be quite as old as some imagine, it has thankfully survived, which is more than can be said of Canons. As recorded here, this was one of the greatest mansions ever built – not just in our locality but anywhere in Britain – yet it was pulled down within a quarter of a century of its creation. Fortunately for us, the Duke of Chandos, who poured a fortune into Canons, had money to spare for the rebuilding of the church of St Lawrence, Whitchurch. In the early twenty-first century, this is still much visited both for its glorious baroque decoration and for its intimate connection with the great composer George Frideric Handel who, as the Duke’s Music Master, regularly played the organ that still survives in the church.

Handel, of course, is only one of a gallery of exciting personalities who have links with Harrow and many of their stories are told in the following pages – from the eighteenth-century miser Daniel Dancer through to such fascinating Victorians as the early feminist Annie Besant, Sir William Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, novelist Anthony Trollope and his indomitable mother Fanny and the sad Horatia Nelson, who spent a lifetime hiding the fact that she was the illegitimate child of Lord Nelson by his liaison with Emma Hamilton.

A familiar king, a less familiar queen and a trio of prime ministers also figure in our narrative which, as it moves into the twentieth century, chronicles the birth and growth of local industries (Kodak among them) and social institutions such as the Salvation Army. You will find, too, a backward glance at the subject of health care (see pp. 37–42) in a borough which still includes Hygeia, the Goddess of Health, in its coat of arms.

Even though a complete book could and perhaps should be written about our town’s involvement in two world wars, this A to Z must be content with a few fascinating facts about Zeppelins and a reminder of the now-forgotten lady who was among the first women to win an OBE, for recruiting women to the country’s munition factories during the First World War.

In contrast, our chapters on the years between the wars are suitably light-hearted, concentrating on the entertainment provided by stars such as Jessie Matthews and the cinemas that showed her films including one picture palace – the former Harrow Granada – which she opened at the height of her fame. Nor have I totally neglected the more recent past, as witness the story of our very new University of Westminster, which is also featured.

Once home to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Headstone Manor was a working farm between the two world wars.

As I wrote earlier, this book started life as a series of newspaper articles. It is, therefore, entirely appropriate that, in recreating the past century and a half, I have been heavily reliant on reports (and, indeed, illustrations) first published in the Harrow Observer and its predecessor, the Harrow Gazette. Since the latter first appeared as long ago as 1855, it is, in itself, part of Harrow’s history.

As with my seven previous volumes, I have also had the privilege of free and unfettered use of that treasure-house of memories, the Harrow Local History Collection, especially its unique photographic archive.

From this brief introduction alone, readers will have realised that Harrow has been home to so many major personalities and events that virtually every letter in the alphabet could have embraced at least half a dozen alternatives: Archbishop Anselm, poet Matthew Arnold, politician Clement Attlee, Byron’s ill-fated daughter Allegra; Byron himself and Thomas Becket; Winston Churchill and Anthony Ashley Cooper (better known as the philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury) are just a few of those clamouring for our attention at the very beginning of the alphabet.

So