HARROW DEVELOPMENT TRUST SILVER ARROW
HERITAGE – DEVELOPING SCIENCE ‘…we need a Museum, a Laboratory, with two good Lecture-rooms for Physical Science, a large and well-lighted room for Drawing, and at least four good Class rooms’: alongside a new Speech Room, these were the ‘very pressing’ wants described in a letter sent in May 1871 to ‘the parents of those who are now, or have been previously, members of the school’. CAMPAIGNS FOR THE NEW SCIENCE BUILDINGS IN 1874 AND 1971 The sum required to complete them was ‘not less than £30,000’, and to raise this money and to celebrate 300 years since the founding of the School, the Lyon Memorial Fund was established. By the Tercentenary Founder’s Day one month later, the Head Master, Dr Butler, was able to announce that ‘up to the previous night £13,000 had been subscribed.’ Although over £30,000 was eventually raised, by the time the new Speech Room was opened in 1874, it had swallowed up a large proportion of the Lyon Memorial Fund. The same year, work started on the new Natural Science Schools, which was to provide accommodation for Physical Science and Chemistry. The design, by architect Charles Forster Hayward, the brother
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of a Harrow Master, was for a stone building with a basement and ground floor only, to leave the views across London unobstructed. The limited funds left available, however, meant that he had to build in brick, rather than the stone of the original design,
and had to cut out all the ornamental features. When the building was opened in 1874, he had only been able to complete the rooms for Physical Science, at a cost of £6,000. The rooms for Chemistry were not added until 1914.
