Photo 21 #366photos: Byron's view

21 January 2012

Looking out towards Windsor, from St Mary's churchyard, Harrow on the Hill

This is Lord Byron's favourite view. He was a schoolboy at Harrow school from 1801 to 1805 and he used to like going to the churchyard, sitting by the elm tree, by his favourite tombstone (the Peachy Tomb).

His poem, 'Lines written beneath an elm in the churchyard of Harrow', was penned about his favourite spot:

'Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;

...
Thou drooping Elm! beneath whose boughs I lay,
And frequent mus'd the twilight hours away;

...'