Harrow, or HARROW-ON-THE-HILL, a town of Middlesex, 11½ miles WNW. of St Paul's, stands on a hill, 200 feet high, that looks over thirteen shires. Its 'visible church,' which crowns the hill-top, was founded by Lanfranc, and rebuilt about the middle of the 14th century. Exhibiting every style of Gothic architecture, from Norman to Perpendicular, it has a lofty spire and eleven brasses (one of them to John Lyon); whilst in the church-yard is a flat tombstone on which Byron as a schoolboy used to lie. Pop. (1881) 5558; (1891) 5725. The district has increased even more rapidly (from 12,796 to 15,710), owing largely to building operations and to the railway improvements.
HARROW SCHOOL was founded in 1571 by John Lyon, a wealthy yeoman of Preston, in the parish of Harrow-on-the-Hill, who died in 1592; but the original red-brick school-house (now the name-bearcarved Fourth Form School) was not built till
1608-15. New buildings have been added since 1819—the chief of these being the Second-pointed chapel (1857), with its tall slender spire and memorial glass to twenty-two Crimean officers; the Vaughan Memorial Library (1863), similarly designed by Sir G. G. Scott; and the semi-circular Speech-room (1877). The school was primarily intended to afford a free education to thirty poor boys of the parish; but the statutes, drawn up by the founder two years before his death, provided also for the admission of 'so many foreigners as the place can conveniently contain;' and it is to that provision that Harrow, although not richly endowed, owes its proud position among the great schools of England. Still, its fortunes have fluctuated much, the number of boys being 144 in 1721, 50 in 1745, 345 in 1803, 80 in 1845, 438 in 1859, and now upwards of 500. The study of mathematics was first introduced in 1837, of modern languages in 1851-55; and all the other branches of a modern education have followed. Music became a specialty of Harrow education under Mr J. Farmer, who was music-master here from 1862 till 1885. Archery, which flourished till 1776, has been superseded by cricket, football, rackets, &c., the Eton and Harrow cricket-match at Lord's dating from 1818. The age of admission is twelve to fourteen; and there are six or seven entrance scholarships, of from £30 to £80 per annum, offered every Easter. Of leaving scholarships, the most valuable are Baring's three of £100 a year for five years to Hertford College, Oxford. Under the Public Schools Act of 1868 the governing body comprises six members, elected respectively by the Lord Chancellor, the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and London, the Royal Society, and the under-masters. Among the twenty-one head-masters have been Archdeacon Thackeray (1746-60), Dr Sumner (1760-71), Dean George Butler (1805-29), Archbishop Longley (1829-36), Bishop Christopher Wordsworth (1836-44), Dean Vaughan (1844-59), Dr Henry Montagu Butler (1859-85), and the Rev. J. E. C. Welldon. Of illustrious Harrovians may be mentioned Lord Aberdeen, Bruce the Abyssinian, Charles Buller, Colonel Burnaby, Lord Byron, Charles Stuart Calverley, the Marquis of Dalhousie, Lord Dalling, Lord Goderich, the Marquis of Hastings, Lord Herbert of Lea, Theodore Hook, Sir William Jones, Cardinal Manning, Hermann Merivale, Dean Merivale, Lord Palmerston, Dr Samuel Parr (a native also, and an under-master), Sir Robert Peel, Spencer Perceval, Admiral Rodney, Lord Shaftesbury, Sheridan, J. S. Symonds, Archbishop Trench, Anthony Trollope, and Sir George Trevelyan. 'Stet fortuna donus.'
See R. Pitcairn, Harrow School (1870); P. M. Thornton, Harrow School and its Surroundings (1885); Bushell, Early Harrow Charters (1893); R. C. Welch, Harrow School Register, 1801-93 (1894); Howson & Warner, Harrow School (1898).