Harrow School   Harrow School 5 High Street

The School was founded in 1572 under the Royal Charter granted by Elizabeth I to John Lyon, a local farmer. His new School House was completed in 1615 and his School, beginning with one recorded pupil, settled into its gradual, if not uninterrupted, growth towards fame.By the beginning of the nineteenth century Joseph Drury could count among his pupils a quartet of future Prime Ministers. Later in the century two remarkable Head Masters, Charles Vaughan (disciple of Thomas Arnold) and HM Butler, brought to the School the far-reaching developments of Victorian education.No great institution can simply rest on its history, and, particularly in the last 25 years, there has been significant modernisation and, thanks to the continuing generosity of our benefactors, much notable building.Pupils have come from all over the world, and there is no 'typical Harrovian'. A favourite School Song celebrates the fact that "the range of Harrow" is a broad one: "Welcome poet and statesman too..." A list of famous Old Harrovians might indeed name many statesmen, including Peel, Palmerston, Churchill, Pandit Nehru and King Hussein of Jordan; poets and writers as diverse as Byron, Sheridan, Trollope, Dornford Yates and Richard Curtis; Lord Rayleigh, the physicist and Nobel prize-winner; Fox Talbot, the inventor of photography; the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans and Bruce the explorer; Sir William Jones, father of philology; Admiral Rodney and Field Marshal Alexander; and nineteen winners of the Victoria Cross.