Harrow School

Harrow School was founded in 1572 by John Lyon of Preston, under a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth. It is an independent school for boys, located in Harrow on the Hill in North West London, England. It is one of the original nine English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868.

Former students of Harrow School include Spencer Perceval, Richard Sheridan, Viscount Goderich, Theodore Hook, Lord Althorp, Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, Lord Shaftesbury, Thomas Duncombe, Winston Churchill, Robert Cunninghame Graham, Arnold Hills, Herbert Musgrave, Bernard Pares, Theodore Hook,Morgan Philips Price, John Galsworthy, Samuel Hoare, Charles Trevelyan, Arthur Bryant, John Amery and Edward Aveling.

Primary Sources

(1) Morgan Philips Price, My Three Revolutions (1969)

When I was fourteen I went to Harrow. My father had been to Eton, but my Trevelyan uncle and cousins had all been to Harrow, so my mother found it easier to get my name down for a house. I was very glad she made that choice. I owe much to Harrow and in all my later life have looked back on the old School with veneration, love and respect. The object of a 'gentleman's' education in those days was not to teach him to work, but rather to enjoy his leisure, to join one of the armed forces or the Church, and to be a pillar of society. The land-owning aristocracy still had a big influence, especially in a school like Harrow. But it had already been considerably tempered by the coming of the middle classes through-out the last part of the nineteenth century; and to be in successful business and well-to-do was considered quite commendable when I was at Harrow. In spite of certain barriers of aristocratic privilege which could still be felt at the School, these barriers were breaking down. New forces were springing up from below. The School was, in fact, a microcosm of what was going on in the rest of the country and change was slowly coming even then at the end of the Victorian era.