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. One of the oldest surviving buildings, in what is today Harrow, is the Grade I listed
Headstone Manor from the 14th century.
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. 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. including a research centre. This facility operated for 125 years. The long chimney has been a landmark in Harrow ever since. 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. 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. 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. on the Hygeia Building 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. 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.
21st century The town centre has undergone a new wave of redevelopment. In 2011, the one-way single lane section of Station Road was widened to allow two-way bus traffic. The 11 storey luxury apartments of Bradstowe House were completed in 2016 after long delays. Former office buildings on Lyon Road (including Coal House, once belonging to the
National Coal Board) have been regenerated into new mixed use buildings in the 2010s, whereas on Pinner Road behind St George's centre a new eight storey development called Trident Point was built which includes a
Morrisons supermarket opened in 2013. The former post-office sorting building on College Road, next to the train station, remained vacant for some years until plans for a 19-storey skyscraper were approved by the council in 2015. The development, called Harrow Square, was partly completed with 318 apartments across four buildings in 2018. It includes a bottom floor library still under construction which will replace the current Gayton Library on St John's Road. The building next to it, formerly First National House, has been refurbished into luxury apartments called The Hub. The borough received a £1 million grant from the
Mayor of London that will go towards a new public square and a "pop-up test eatery" at the site of the former Cumberland Hotel on Lyon Road, expected to be completed by 2020. The 1930s
art deco facade of the Safari Cinema, which has been hidden since the 1960s, is set to be restored from 2020. The council aims to invest over a billion pounds in the town centres of Harrow and
Wealdstone and the Station Road corridor in between. ==Geography==