Beyond Baker Street: Harrow-on-the-Hill, Metro-land's Hidden Gem

A 25-minute ride from Baker Street takes you to a 1901 pub, an ancient hilltop, and the school that shaped Churchill, Byron, and Nehru.

You've got your days in London mapped out — the towers, the museums, the markets. But what about the morning you want something quieter, older, and a little off the usual route? Expat Andy takes us to Harrow-on-the-Hill. A green hilltop in the city's northwest that people have treated as sacred for more than twelve hundred years, sitting just 25 minutes from Baker Street on the Metropolitan line.

There's a pagan shrine older than England, a hilltop church consecrated in 1094, and the famous school where Byron carved his name into the paneling, Churchill came back to sing during the Blitz, and a future first Prime Minister of India read his way toward revolution. At the foot of the hill sits The Castle — a Fuller's pub built the year Queen Victoria died, with its original curving bar, glazed partition, and three working fireplaces still in place. CAMRA rates its interior of outstanding national importance. It's barely changed since opening day in 1901.

Expat Andy gives you the story and the logistics in one go: why this hill matters, what to look for inside the pub, and exactly how to get there (Harrow-on-the-Hill tube, Zone 5, then a ten-minute walk up the hill). If you want one easy, atmospheric escape from central London that most visitors never find, this is your blueprint. Real history, real ale, no clichés — a signal in the travel information static.

Transcript

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There is a hill in northwest London that people have considered sacred for over twelve hundred years. Before the church, before the school, before the pub at the foot of the lane, there was a pagan shrine. The Anglo Saxons called the hill the Heathen Temple of the Gumeningas.

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Mary's Church was consecrated at the summit in 1094. Then Elizabeth I chartered a school here. Byron came and carved his name in the panel in. Churchill came back during the Blitz and sang. Nero read about revolution in the library and took the idea home to India. And at the foot of the hill in 1901, someone built that pub. It still has its original bar, partition, and fireplaces. I'm expat Andy. This is Love Letter to London Pubs. Harrow first appeared in the written record in a charter of the year 767 AD as Gumeninga Erge, translated as Heathen Shrine or Temple of the Gumeningas. Harrow derives from the Old English Herg, meaning heathen shrine or altar. In the Domesday Book of 1086, it is Herges, an estate assessed at a hundred hides, held by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The early church put Saint Mary's at the summit of the hill at the site of the earlier pagan shrine. It was consecrated on 4th of January 1094 by Saint Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Looking south across London from the churchyard of St. Mary's today, on a clear day you can see as far as the North Downs. In 1572, a local farmer named John Lyon obtained a royal charter from Elizabeth I to found a school on the hill, free for local boys, with fees for boarders from further afield. Lyon's endowment came with a condition. He had to maintain two roads to London, the Harrow Road and the Edgeway Road. Lyon died in 1592. Both roads, we still have them. Thank you, Mr. Lyon. Harrow School is red brick with rough cast upper floors and machine tile roofs. Buildings at the School of English Heritage highest graded two-star listed status. There's the speech room designed by William Burgess in 1877. The Vaughan Library designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1863, the Harrow School Chapel, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott 1854 to 1857. And the War Memorial Building, Neo-Jacobean building designed by Sir Herbert Baker, 1926. And the winner is just kidding. Twenty-seven buildings at Harrow School have grade two listed status, many of them designed by architect and former Harrow School pupil Edward Schroeder Pryor. Notable examples are the Headmaster's House, built in 1843, designed by Decimus Burton, the Grove, a prominent mid-18th century boarding house, the Art School, designed by Edward Pryor in 1890, the Butler Museum, built in 1886 by Basil Champneys, and the Music School, built in 1890 by Edward Pryor. Harrow School has produced seven British Prime Ministers, Aberdeen, Spencer Percival, Gooderich, Robert Peel, Palmerston, Stanley Baldwin, and Winston Churchill. The first Prime Minister of Independent India, Jawahalal Neru, and King Hussein of Jordan. The inventor of photography Fox Talbot, the archaeologist Arthur Evans, who excavated Gnosos and discovered the Minoan civilization, the playwright Richard Sheridan, novelist Anthony Trollope, who was bullied there and excluded from every game. Richard Curtis, Benedict Cumberbatch, and James Blunt. The sport of squash was invented at Harrow around 1830, grown out of the game of rackets. The Eton vs. Harrow cricket match at Lourdes has run since 1805, the longest run in fixture at Lourdes and the oldest fixture at the ground. In the fourth form room, the school's original classroom, completed in 1615, carved into the paneled walls, are the name of Byron, Churchill, Peel, and Sheridan. George Gordon Byron arrived at Harrow in 1801, aged 13. In 1805, when Poplar Headmaster Joseph Drury retired, governors appointed a successor that the boys despised. Byron aged 17 is said to have led a plot to blow up the new headmaster's house with gunpowder. What stopped it was not conscience, but the fear that the explosion would destroy the carved names in the paneling. Byron kept returning to the churchyard of Saint Mary's to lie under an elm tree and think. In September eighteen oh seven he wrote a poem there, lines written beneath an elm in the churchyard of Harrow on the Hill. It's about mortality and belonging, and the wish to be buried here. Here might I sleep, where all my hopes arose, scene of my youth, and couch of my repose. Forever stretched beneath this mantle in shade, pressed by the turf where once my childhood played. Two of the most consequential political figures of the twentieth century sat in the same classrooms on this hill. Nero came in the early 1900s. He read Trevelyan's books on Garibaldi in the library and found in the Italian revolutionary hero a model, a man who had liberated a nation from foreign rule. Nero's biographers note that Harrow materially shaped the political ideas that Nero took back to India. Churchill attended from 1888 to 1893. He was a poor student, miserable at school, and with little interest in the classical curriculum. His exam results enraged his father. In October 1940, as Prime Minister, in the middle of the Blitz, Churchill returned to attend the school's songs concert in the speech room. His private secretary, Jock Colville, reported hearing him singing Harris songs in the bath. He came back every year of the war. The boys wrote a special verse for him. It was at the 1941 visit that he delivered one of his most famous lines to the assembled boys. Never give in, never give in. Never, never, never, never in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in. Churchill's songs is still celebrated annually at the school, with members of the Churchill family in attendance. Before the railway, Harrow was a rural village with an ancient hill and a famous school. After the Metropolitan Railway reached Harrow on 2nd of August 1880, Harrow was a suburb in the making. From 1915, the Metropolitan Railway marketed suburbs on the new line as Metroland, houses with gardens, clean air, and a 25-minute commute to Baker Street. The station opened as Plain Harrow in 1880 and renamed Harrow on the Hill in 1894. John Becheman captured the transformation of rural to suburbs in his 1973 BBC documentary Metroland. Melancholy and Beautiful, and exactly right. The Castle Pub at 30 West Street, Harrow HA13EF, was built in 1901, a pub for a community the railway was in the process of creating. This same year Queen Victoria died, and King Edward VII was crowned on West Street at the foot of the hill, not far from the school. The castle is grade two listed and camera rates it three star for its interior of outstanding national historic importance, the highest rating that Camera awards. The interior has barely changed since opening day. Between the front and rear rooms, a glazed partition almost reaches the ceiling. A rear survival with a three-foot-high service hatch cut through it so that staff could pass between rooms without using the main doors. The rear room retains its original curved bar counter and bar back shelves, beveled mirror panels, and a door still marked with the figure five. The former billiard room at the back has its original wood block flooring. There are three real fireplaces still operating. The castle is at 30 West Street, Harrow on the Hill, HA13EF. Nearest tube is Harrow on the Hill on the Metropolitan Line, Zone 5, about 25 minutes from Baker Street. The pub is a 10-minute walk from the station. And of course, it's uphill. It's a Fuller's pub serving real ale, ESB on permanent rotation. Food daily. Camera Harrow Pub of the Year in 2017, 2019, 2022, and 2025. The hill above it was a heathen shrine before England existed. The school on the hill carved the names of its most famous sons into a wall in 1615 and are still there. Byron lay under an elm and wished to be buried at the top. Churchill came back to sing in the darkest year of the century. At the foot of it all, with its glazed partition, fireplaces, and original bar is a pub built the year Queen Victoria died. If you live, work or travel in London, or if you own, manage or work in a London pub, if you work as a London tour guide or at a London attraction, and you'd like to be a guest contributor to our main podcast, Publicity, your London Travel Toolkit, email me expatandy at publicithepodcast.com. Love our content? Love London and its pubs? The best thing you can do is share the love. Literally, share this episode with your network. Your share is the butterfly ripple effect across the globe for a small business in London.