Harrow School, a charity for poor parish boys that gave the world squash
John Lyon's will left most of his money not to the school he founded but to the upkeep of two roads into London. That lopsided bequest lasted until 1991. Meanwhile his free grammar school for local boys turned into Harrow, alma mater of Churchill, Nehru and the inventors of squash.
Queen Elizabeth I granted the charter in February 1572 to John Lyon, a prosperous farmer of Harrow on the Hill. Officially, it remains John Lyon's Free Grammar School to this day. Lyon wanted free schooling for 30, later 40, poor boys of the parish, but the master was allowed to take paying outsiders, known as foreigners, and it was their need for lodgings that created boarding. When Lyon died in 1592, the Harrow Road and the Edgware Road received the lion's share of his estate, while the school got barely enough for the master's salary.
Local families soon lost interest in a diet of Latin and Greek. By 1825 the school had 17 free scholars against 219 fee-paying foreigners, and in 1876 a separate Lower School was opened to give local boys a modern education; it survives as the John Lyon School. Fagging was once routine: in 1796, 50 of 139 boys served seniors as fags, a custom phased out in the 1970s and banned outright by 1990.
Sport runs deep. Around 1830 boys adapted the game of rackets into something first called squasher, which spread to other schools and became squash. Harrow and Eton have played cricket at Lord's every year since 1805, the oldest fixture at the ground. The school even claims Oxford Blue: at the first Boat Race in 1829, two Old Harrovians in the Oxford crew chose colours modelled on Harrovian navy.
The Old Schools building dates largely from 1615. Today 833 boys, all full boarders, live in twelve houses and wear straw hats on weekdays and tailcoats on Sundays. Former pupils include seven British prime ministers, among them Robert Peel and Winston Churchill, India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, King Hussein of Jordan and twenty holders of the Victoria Cross.
Source: Harrow School
