W a y m a r k s ~: A Distant View of Harrow

Again I behold where for hours I have ponder’d,

As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay;

Or round the steep brow of the churchyard I wander’d,

To catch the last gleam of the sun’s setting ray.

Lord Byron and I have something in common. We both went to school on "the Hill." That is, Harrow-on the-Hill. Except he went to the School, whereas I went to a small Sixth Form College located a little further down the road in the grounds of an old Dominican Convent. But, like Byron before me, the Hill remains “a favourite spot” – associated in my mind with a time of very happy friendships. That time was some 30 years ago now, but those friendships have lasted through the decades, and only just this summer, we managed to meet up once again on the Hill for a reunion at The Castle pub on West Street.

High Street, Harrow-on-the-Hill, c.1950s

The Hill is one of those places which time never seems to change or alter. It looks much the same today as it did when I was at Sixth Form in the early 1990s, just the same as it does in old black and white photos from the early Twentieth Century, and the same as it appears in even earlier drawings and engravings dating back to Byron’s day. Harrow-on-the-Hill stands like a verdant island oasis rising out of the surrounding sea of suburbia on the edge of London, made all the more distinctive by the tall church spire which reaches out of the green swathe of trees which seem to engulf the Hill. Travelling north on either of the mainline railways departing from Euston or Kings Cross-St. Pancras, Harrow-on-the-Hill can be seen as clearly as if it were a beacon. Long after I’d moved away from Harrow, whenever I travelled on these routes out of London, I’d always make sure I sat on the left-hand side of the train carriage to ensure I saw that familiar view of my old hometown passing by in the far distance.

High Street, Harrow-on-the-Hill, 2021

From the top of the Hill, looking out in the other direction, it is possible to get some wonderful views of London to the southeast – I remember a window on one of the staircases in my college building which framed a lovely view of faraway London, with the Telecom Tower as the most recognisable landmark at that time. From ‘The Viewpoint’ on the crest of the Hill in St. Mary’s Churchyard, looking west, there’s an open view all the way to Windsor somewhere on the broad horizon. A brass plaque in the form of a topographical map is set on the top of a kind of look-out-point built of stone on which you can stand and strain your eyes as you try to make-out Windsor Castle – something which I have never managed to do (and, to be honest, I have no idea if it is actually possible).

The Viewpoint, however, is far more famous for a sight you’ll see if you turn your back on Windsor and look towards the Church itself. Here you will notice a low table-type tomb built of brick, supporting a cracked stone slab, and protected by an ornate iron cage. This is the Peachey Tomb. Although it is also more popularly known as ‘Byron’s Tomb.’ But this name is somewhat misleading, for it is not his tomb in the sense that this is the grave where he lies buried. Rather, it is ‘Byron’s tomb’ in the sense that this is the spot where the poet says he used to enjoy idling the hours away during his schooldays in the early 1800s. This is the place where he liked to watch the sunset while lying on top of this tomb beneath an elm tree. Indeed, it is a scene which he sketches out in two poems that featured in his first published book of poetry, Hours of Idleness (1807). These were poems which he wrote when he was 18 and 19 years old, around the same age I was when attending Sixth Form. In one of the poems, he imagines, at the end of his life, his body being buried in a humble grave here in Harrow churchyard.

Oft have I thought, ’twould soothe my dying hour,—

If aught may soothe, when Life resigns her power,—

To know some humbler grave, some narrow cell,

Would hide my bosom where it lov’d to dwell;

With this fond dream, methinks ’twere sweet to die—

And here it linger’d, here my heart might lie;

Here might I sleep where all my hopes arose,

Scene of my youth, and couch of my repose;

For ever stretch’d beneath this mantling shade,

The opening lines from this poem, written by Bryon while sitting atop the tomb – as the poem’s title attests – were later carved in marble and set with lead-lettering as a memorial to Byron which stands at the foot of the Peachey Tomb. The stone was placed there in 1905 by the son of Sir George Sinclair Bart, a schoolfellow of Byron’s, in memory of his father and the poet’s friendship. I am not sure when the iron cage was placed over the tomb, but, so the local story goes, this cage needed to be installed because the spot became a place of pilgrimage for overly ardent Byron fans during the heady days of “Byronmania,” because the tomb was suffering from people emulating the poet by clambering onto it and lolling about on the top, or even more destructively deliberately chipping off pieces to take away as mementoes.

My friends and I used to come to this ‘favourite spot’ quite a lot. We’d sit on the benches here during college breaktimes, as well as passing by when en route at the end of the college day, heading back down to Harrow town centre, where we’d then kill time wandering around the shops before reluctantly parting and making our separate ways home. And a couple of years before I went to Sixth Form, I stayed for a weekend in the Vicarage of St. Mary’s Church during the religious studies prior to my Confirmation. The room I stayed in had a window which looked out over the same view as that seen from the Viewpoint, just a short stone’s throw from the Peachey Tomb itself. All of which meant the Hill was a place I came to know intimately during my teenage years, much as Byron must have done.

Byron's name, Harrow School

There are other traces of Byron too, which can still be found lingering about the Hill. Perhaps the most direct association is the carving of his name into the wooden panelling of the old School Room. This particular piece of graffiti looks a lot neater than the rendering of his name which is scratched into a stone pillar in the dungeon of the Chateau de Chillon on the Swiss shores of Lake Leman, which is said to have been inscribed by the poet himself while he was wandering through Europe during his years of self-imposed exile, when his scandalous love life compelled him to leave England.

Thomas Phillips, George Gordon, 6th Lord Byron (1788–1824) in Albanian Dress, 1834

A more poignant monument linking Byron to Harrow Churchyard, however, is the one located low to the ground beside the door of St. Mary’s South Porch. This is a small plaque commemorating Byron’s daughter, Allegra. She was born ten years after Byron wrote his poem beneath the elm tree here in the same churchyard, envisaging his own internment there some day. Instead, it was his young daughter with Claire Clairmont who was laid to rest here in 1822 in a very humble grave, so humble in fact that only its rough location – somewhere near the porch door – is known. Allegra’s grave remained unmarked until the Byron Society erected this plaque in 1980. At the time of her burial, Allegra was denied a memorial, allegedly due to the fact she had been born illegitimate, but the real reason was perhaps much more likely due to the Church Authority’s aversion to Byron’s infamous immorality. Hence, he knew they would never permit his body to be laid to rest there when the time eventually came.

Allegra was just five years old when she died, and although Byron had sent for her – her mother mistakenly believing Allegra would have better prospects if she was raised by her famous father – he neglected his daughter severely. First passing responsibility for her care onto his friends, who were at best indifferent to her, and then subsequently sending her off to a series of convents in remote parts of Italy, where he wouldn’t have to see or think about her. It’s thought she died from typhus or malaria. Her unexpected death shook her father to the core apparently. Guilt and grief became transmuted. He had her small body sent back to England, where he paid lavishly for her little coffin to be conveyed in a fancy horse-drawn hearse from the London docks to Harrow. Where Allegra was buried in this ‘favourite spot’ of his own youth, meaning that in some sense a part of him does lie here in Harrow churchyard. It’s a sad story. But perhaps Allegra’s death embodies the innocence, both hers and her father’s own, which Byron had so profligately cast aside: “Deplor’d by those in early days allied, / And unremember’d by the world beside.”

St. Mary's, Harrow-on-the-Hill, 1921

From The Viewpoint, St. Mary’s Churchyard continues down the slope of the Hill. Filled with tall and imposing Gothic Victorian headstones, there are many interesting graves and memorials to be found hidden away here. It is a quiet and tranquil haven for birds and wildlife. Wandering beneath the tall trees this summer, though, I was struck by how unkempt and uncared for much of the churchyard seems nowadays. A lot of the graves appear to have succumbed to the depredations of time and the elements in the 30 years or so since my college days, when I used to pass through the old place more regularly. At long last, outrun by time it seems, the names of many of those who lived here long ago, and who have long since been laid to rest here on the Hill, are no longer remembered by those ‘dearly beloved’ inscriptions which have slowly eroded from their moss covered and ivy-swathed memorials. It seems strange to think how a poet’s words and a poet’s fame can remain as something more permanent than words and names which were intended to endure, wrought in stone, forever. I suppose, as the Romantic poets knew and lamented only too well, all things must pass in time. Though they change, places persist, while memories fade.

It was during my time at Sixth Form College, here on the Hill, while studying for English A-Level, that I first read the Romantic poets. We studied John Keats, but I remember reading Byron too. I can still recite Byron’s She Walks In Beauty by heart even today. It is definitely one of my favourite poems. Studying the Romantics certainly helped to instil a love of literature which in later years lead me on to delight in the wicked humour of Byron’s epic, Don Juan. One of the things I most enjoyed at Sixth Form was being a member of the creative writing club, which wasn’t quite Dead Poet’s Society, but something rather like it given the small size of the college and its beautiful grounds. I genuinely enjoyed Sixth Form, despite the fact that I found A-Levels pretty hard-going – tougher in fact than my subsequent studies at university, both as an undergraduate and as a postgrad. I suppose it was a combination of time and place, but most especially people – my friends and fellow students were what made my two years at Sixth Form College so special. Hence, the same as Byron, I feel a deep and abiding affection for the Hill because of the warmth derived from the memories I retain of it.

Beyond the graveyard of St. Mary’s Church, there is a wide expanse of green grass which hasn’t changed at all. This green space, where as kids we used to go tobogganing in winter, is crossed by a narrow path which starts at the foot of the Hill beside St. Anselm’s Primary School (named after the beatified priest who first consecrated St. Mary’s Church in 1094). The path runs across the side of the Hill to West Street. In the mornings I often used to walk this path to college from the bus station in Harrow on the days when I didn’t cycle to Sixth Form. It was always a nice way to start the day, getting a breath of fresh air while listening to the wind soughing through the branches of the tall trees surrounding the church, whatever the season and whatever the weather. But it was even nicer to walk this path once again on a sunny afternoon this summer. A true homecoming, long awaited. Making my way up to The Castle once more, to meet with my old college friends, and to feel all those years simply melt away.