Harrow, London
Harrow is a large town in Greater London, England, and serves as the principal settlement of the London Borough of Harrow. Lying about north-west of Charing Cross and south of Watford, the entire town including its localities had a population of 149,246 at the 2011 census, whereas the wider borough had a population of 250,149.
The original settlement was at Harrow on the Hill, atop the Harrow Hill. The modern town centre of Harrow developed at the foot of the hill, in an area historically called Greenhill, following the opening of Harrow-on-the-Hill station on the Metropolitan Railway in 1880. Harrow became the unofficial "capital" of the Metroland suburbia in the early 20th century. Harrow & Wealdstone station on the West Coast Main Line had opened in 1837, but was more distant from Harrow, lying north of the hill. Workers were drawn to the area by the opening of several factories in Wealdstone; Harrow was the base of the large Kodak factory, used for the manufacture of photographic materials and R&D, which was in operation for more than a century.
Historically in the hundred of Gore in the county of Middlesex, Harrow became part of Greater London in 1965. Today, the historic area is distinguished as Harrow on the Hill and is a conservation area with listed buildings of Georgian architecture and home to Harrow School, one of the seven major boys' boarding schools in England as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868. The modern-day town meanwhile is an established commercial centre of outer north-west London and houses a campus of the University of Westminster.
Etymology
Harrow's name comes from Old English hearg, ' temple', which was probably on the hill of Harrow, where St. Mary's Church now stands. The name has been studied in detail by Keith Briggs.The original Greenhill hamlet derived its name from either an unidentified local green hill, or was imported from a manorial surname. It was not recorded in the Domesday Book but was mentioned as early as 1334 as Grenehulle. In addition, one or more families bearing the Greenhulle or Greenhill surname lived there from at least 1247, and are likely to have taken their name from this location. The name Greenhill survives and the local council has continued the name by using it for Greenhill Way, a road which by-passes the mainly-pedestrianised and modernised shopping area based around College Road and St Anns Road. The name is also still used for the local electoral ward.
It is possible that Greenhill went by an even older name, Norbury, c.1300, but the hamlet of Norbury has not been identified with certainty. The name may have been correspondent to Sudbury, being north of what was then Harrow Hill.
History
The modern town centre of Harrow was formerly known as Greenhill, and was a small hamlet of farms at the foot of Harrow Hill. For almost a millennium, the centre of Harrow was atop the hill, but this began to change during the 19th century. Circa 1852, the village had 8 houses, 17 cottages, and one inn, with 141 people. This area was part of the hundred of Gore, in the historic county of Middlesex. In 1850 a local board district was established for the central part of the ancient parish of Harrow on the Hill, including the old village and the adjoining hamlets of Greenhill, Roxeth, and Sudbury.Urban development
By 1865, a series of roads had been built in Greenhill, including College, Roxborough, Kymberley, Headstone, Clarendon, Byron and St Anns - but few houses. A parish church, St John's Church, was built in 1866 on a farm and Greenhill subsequently became a separate ecclesiastical parish in 1896. The church building has been Grade II listed since 1994. The Metropolitan Railway connection dates from 1880 with the building of Harrow-on-the-Hill station, which led to a housebuilding boom and a population of 4,892 by 1902. Developments westward along the railway in the Headstone and Pinner as well as Roxborough and Wealdstone engulfed Greenhill with new developments, and soon enough there was nothing left of the original village..
In 1899, the junction of Grove Hill and Lowlands Road is said to have been the scene of Britain's first fatal car accident. There is a plaque to commemorate this at the top of Grove Hill where it meets the High Street and Peterborough Hill.
In Greenhill, there was a workmen's club from the 1860s and a public hall, Victoria Hall, by 1888.
The Local Government Act 1894 converted local board districts such as Harrow on the Hill into urban districts. The new town centre which had grown up around the station became known simply as Harrow to distinguish it from the original hilltop village. The name of the urban district which contained both places remained Harrow on the Hill until 1934 when the district was enlarged and renamed just Harrow. The Harrow Urban District was incorporated to become a municipal borough in 1954, with the same area becoming the London Borough of Harrow on being transferred from Middlesex to Greater London in 1965. One of the oldest surviving buildings in what is today Harrow is the Grade I listed Headstone Manor from the 15th century.
Harrow contributed to the growing photographic industry in the UK; a large industrial premises was built in 1890 by the American Eastman Kodak company in Wealdstone, and by 1965 there were over 100 buildings on a 55-acre site at Kodak Harrow, employing 5,500 people, including a research centre. This facility operated for 125 years. The long chimney has been a landmark in Harrow ever since.
File:NatWest Harrow Grade II listed building.jpg|thumb|315 Station Road, Grade II listed building designed by Sir Banister Fletcher in 1915, which houses a NatWest bank today
In 1914, a major department store named Sopers opened on Station Road. The site became a Debenhams store; it closed in May 2021 after the collapse of the Debenham's chain. Its facade dated from the 1960s.
During the inter-war period Harrow had grown into a suburb. Almost two-thirds of housing stock in the present day Borough of Harrow dates back to the interwar period.
Railway accidents
The modern town of Harrow and much of the borough overall has been defined historically by the growth of the railways, as Harrow expanded and saw housing developments as a result of the building of the Metropolitan Railway into what was, in early Victorian times, the rural areas to the north-west of London. The borough now has many railway stations.Harrow has been the location of several serious train accidents.
On 7 August 1838, Thomas Port died from injuries received in a train accident near Harrow. His gravestone in the parish churchyard of St Mary's, Harrow-on-the-Hill, states: "To the memory of Thomas Port, son of John Port of Burton-upon-Trent in the County of Stafford, Hat Manufacturer, who near this town had both legs severed from his body by the railway train. With great fortitude, he bore a second amputation by the surgeons and died from loss of blood, August 7th 1838, aged 33 years."
On 26 November 1870, two trains collided at Harrow & Wealdstone station, killing 9 and injuring 44.
On 8 October 1952, three trains collided at Harrow & Wealdstone station, killing 112 people. Of the dead, 64 were railway employees on their way to work. This is the greatest loss of life in any United Kingdom railway accident in peacetime.
Battle of Britain
Although The Blitz is generally claimed to have started on 7 September 1940, many sources state that one of the earliest bombing raid from the Luftwaffe occurred in Harrow and Wealdstone on 22 August 1940. It caused damage to cinemas, houses and a bank, but with no fatalities. Although Harrow was then in Middlesex, it was classed as a London area by the civil defence as it came under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police. The very first air raid on the present day London area is believed to be the accidental bombing of Croydon Airport on 15 August 1940, which was then in Surrey.Post-war
The town was part of the Harrow Urban District, a district council within the county of Middlesex, from 1934 until 1965, which also included parts of Edgware, Hendon, Wembley and Pinner. The London Borough of Harrow was formed in 1965 as the only London borough unaffected by boundary changes.By the 1950s, Harrow was described as the "capital city of Metro-land". The borough's council Civic Centre building complex was built in 1970–1972, opened 6 May 1973, on Station Road in Wealdstone. Six storeys high and designed by architect Eric Broughton, the building is considered "outdated and costly" in 2018 and was expected to be imminently redeveloped. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, many new office blocks were built in the town, especially in Lyon Road and the western end of College Road.
In 1974, the Kodak Mural designed by Pentagram was completed on the first floor of the recently opened Civic Centre. It contains almost one thousand photographic tiles representing Harrow and designed to commemorate the town and borough's links with Kodak.
The town underwent regeneration in the 1980s with the building of a bus station in College Road and the pedestrianisation of St Anns Road. A statue called "Skipping Katie" was unveiled by the local council in May 1987 to celebrate the completion of the pedestrianisation. The landmark was designed by James Butler inspired by watching his daughter skip. A plaque on Katie was unveiled in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh to mark the 50th anniversary of the London Borough of Harrow.
In the autumn of 1987, Diana, Princess of Wales visited Harrow, where she officially opened the new St Anns shopping centre amid a large crowd of locals. Located opposite the central train station on College Road, the centre was built on demolished buildings including Heathfield School for Girls, which moved away to Pinner in 1982.
Nearby St Anns shopping centre, another indoor retail outlet was built which was opened as St George's Shopping and Leisure Centre on St George's Day in 1996. The town's Woolworths store on Station Road closed and was replaced by a new branch inside St George's. Other landmarks built during the decade include the Hygeia building in 1991, which has an erected golden coloured sculpture of Roman goddess Hygeia facing the bus station. Furthermore, in 1991, Lower Mead stadium on Station Road, the home of Wealdstone F.C., was sold to Tesco and demolished. In its place a new large Tesco superstore was built.