Harrow School Memorial Building copyright historic england

Harrow School War Memorial Building, Harrow-on-the-Hill, Greater London. Upgraded to Grade II*. Opened by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin 3 June 1926. Herbert Baker designed this war memorial grouping in 1920 to be at the very heart of the school. A Neo-Jacobean Memorial Building with a gated and vaulted loggia houses the sacred Memorial Shrine with a lamp that must remain lit at all times in memory of the 642 students who died in the First World War. Within the Shrine is a austere sarcophagus decorated with a carved sword and wreaths. Wall panels are inscribed with the names of the fallen, each surmounted with gilded words, part of which read: ‘…Remember those who died for freedom and honour and see you to it that they shall not be forgotten.’ Lady Fitch funded the outstanding decoration of the room above the Shrine in memory of her son, Alexander Fitch, a former pupil, who was killed in nothern France, September 1918. Elizabethan oak panelling and fittings were brought here from Brooke House, Hackney, including an ornate stone fireplace, with carvings from the period of Henry VII. The teak boards used for the floor came from HMS St Vincent, a Napoleonic battleship built at Plymouth in 1815.