About Us

Harrow Photos is the website for the collection of photos from the branch of the Hills and Saunders photography business based on Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middlesex, England.

After the Harrow branch closed, ownership of the 80,000 (est.) glass slides moved across to Harrow School who spent a number of years storing them, and gradually working away at scanning, archiving and protecting the collection.

In 2009 the collection of photos moved into the private ownership of Alasdair Kirk.

Alasdair Kirk has considerable links to the school and the area of Harrow-on-the-Hill. His great-great-grand-father, (James Paton Charles) built Kennet House in Harrow Park in the 1870s, his extensive family went to the school and in many cases married into local families, their children also attended the school, and so a family became entrenched in one locale.

James Paton Charles is commemorated in the East window of St. Mary's (the church built on top of the hill), and his wife in the Lady Chapel built in her honour. The family was involved in the planting of Christ Church Roxeth further down the hill, where his Grandmother was baptised, a church he attended as a child and which even today his brother and family attend.

As well as close family links, Alasdair Kirk is a photographer, and a member of the RPS. His company Designtoo built the original website for the collection and is now transferring it to their new CMS software.