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Harrow's history: A brief outline

In the Doomsday Book of 1086, the manor of Herges (Harrow) was the largest in the county of Middlesex. The manors of Stanmere (Great Stanmore) and Stanmera (Little Stanmore) were also included in William the Conqueror's great survey of England. A year later, Archbishop Lantranc founded a new church at Harrow, which was consecrated in 1094 by his successor, Anselm. No trace of the original Norman building remains; the earliest parts of the present church of St Mary date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Harrow was used an occasional place of residence by the Archbishops on their way to the court of Woodstock, near Oxford. They hunted in the countryside because in the thirteenth century Pinner Park had been set aside as a hunting enclosure. Thomas Becket first visited Harrow in 1143 and commenced his final journey to Canterbury from here in December 1170.

Becket's manor house was close to the church; after 1344 the Archbishops moved from Sudbury to Headstone. Their moated manor house still stands in Headstone Manor Recreation Ground. The chapel has gone but part of the original aisled hall remains. Three bays of the Tithe Barn, described as new in 1506, had to be reserved for the Archbishops use by the tenant farmer.

Nearby Pinner, first mentioned in 1232, had a chapel by 1240, replaced by the present church in 1321. By this time the most populous hamlet, it was granted in 1336 a weekly market and two fairs on the feast days of St John the Baptist. One fair still survives, now held in the streets of the village on the Wednesday following the Spring Bank Holiday.

Harrow School was founded by a Royal Charter granted in 1572 to John Lyon, a prosperous farmer from the village of Preston, two miles to the east of the Hill. The original school building was completed in 1615, seven year's after the death of Johns widow. It contains the Fourth Form Room, a uniquely preserved Jacobean school room, on the panelling of which have been carved the names or initials of hundreds of Harrow boys. The school numbers among its former pupils seven British prime ministers, including Peel, Palmerston and Winston Churchill, two kings, two archbishops, as well as literary figures like Sheridan, Byron and Trollope, the historians G.M. Trevelyan and Sir Arthur Bryant, and the philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury.

Handel was employed as resident composer between 1717 and 1720 by the Duke of Chandos. He worked in his magnificent new mansion, Canons, and used the organ in the nearby parish chuch of St Lawrence, rebuilt by the Duke and now restored to its former Baroque glory. Canons was fulsomely described by Daniel Defoe, while Alexander Pope satirized the Duke's extravagant lifestyle. After his death the house was demolished and the North London Collegiate School for Girls now occupies its more modest successor.

The first Bentley Priory was a religious house founded in the thirteenth century by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It probably stood near Priory House, off Clamp Hill. The next was a mansion built on higher ground to the north in the eighteenth century. The first Marquess of Abercorn engaged the celebrated architect Sir John Loans and later Sir Robert Smirke on alterations and additions to the house after he acquired it in 1788. Visitors to the house included William Pitt, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Walter Scott, and the actor John Philip Kemble, who lived nearby. Later the Dowager Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV, rented the Priory; and died there in December 1849. The Royal Air force took it over in 1926, and from 1936 until 1968 it was the headquarters of Fighter Command. It was from Bentley Priory that Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding organised the air defences of the country and directed the course of the Battle of Britain in 1940.

Grim's Dyke, named after the ancient earthwork which forms a feature of the estate, was completed in 1872 by Norman Shaw for the painter Frederick Goodall. From 1890 it was the home of Sir William Gilbert, librettist of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, who served as a magistrate at Edgware and Wealdstone courts during his years in Harrow Weald. He died of a heart attack in 1911 while rescuing a guest who had got into difficulties swimming in the lake he had created in the grounds of the house.

Gilbert was instrumental in preserving what remained of Harrow Weald Common, part of the ancient woodland which had covered the north at Harrow for centuries. Large farms and estates to the south and west, wheat fields of the sixteenth century, hay meadows and hunting country in the nineteenth gradually succumbed to the development brought by the railways. The London and Birmingham railways built by George and Robert Stephenson, was the first to reach Harrow in 1837. A new town grew up around the station and sixty years later Wealdstone had become the centre of industry in the district. The Metropolitan line transformed the villages of Greenhill and Pinner after it passed through in the 1880s. After the First World War, "MetroLand" was the place to live, and in the twenties and thirties enterprising builders completely changed the face of Harrow in many cases creating new suburbs where only fields had existed previously.

Printed with permission: copyright Bob Thomson 1988.

How Labour has helped Harrow West

NHS

• £26.5 million more has been allocated to Brent and Harrow District Health Authority than last year, a rise of 8%. Next year it will rise by £29.58 million, or in real terms £20.22 million, an increase of 5.93%. Labour has guaranteed that their allocation will increase by at least 6% in real terms for the two years after that.

• Northwick Park Hospital has received £1.3 million to modernize its Accident and Emergency Department.

• Breast Cancer patients are now seen by a specialist within two weeks.

• A new hospital development costing £54 million is being built by Barnet and Chase Farms Hospitals NHS Trust.

• NHS Direct, the free 24 hour nurse led helpline, is now available to everyone in Harrow West.

Education

• Across the UK funding per pupil has risen by £300 in real terms since 1997.

• Harrow Education Authority's funding allocation has been increased by £5.27 million.

• 6% more 11 year olds have reached the required standard of reading and writing than did in 1997.

• 11% more have reached the required maths standard.

• Classes of 5, 6 and 7 year olds with more than thirty children have been reduced from 23% in 1997 to 4% this year.

• 692 infants are in smaller classes.

Working Family Tax Credit

• A National Minimum Wage has been introduced.

• 870 working families in Harrow West are benefiting from the Working Family Tax Credit, and now have a guaranteed income of at least £214.

• Approximately 15 050 working people in Harrow West have been helped by a 1p cut in the basic rate of income tax.

Child Benefit

• Parents receive £15 a week for their first child, compared to £11.40 under the last government, a rise of 36%.

• Child benefit has been increased to £10 a week for all other children.

New Deal

• 41% less people are on the dole in Harrow West than were in 1997.

• 131 young people have a job because of the New Deal. 344 have otherwise benefited.

Pensioners

• At least 3000 of the least-well off pensioners in Harrow West have gained from the Minimum Income Guarantee, which from April 2001 ensures that no pensioner will receive less than £92.15 a week, for single pensioners, or £121.95 for pensioner couples.

• All pensioners in Harrow West, each of the 16 427, is benefiting from the Winter Fuel Payment, which will be £200 this year, and will go to all households with someone over 60.

• 6571 over 75s are benefiting from a free TV license, saving £104 per year.