Place Name
There are two possible William Boltons both of whom were connected with Harrow School who this road may be named after. The first and most likely candidate was the ninth headmaster who was employed between 1685 and 1691. A fellow of both Oxford and Cambridge having been one of the founding scholars at Chaterhouse, Bolton also served as rector of Dunsby in Lincolnshire. He was said to have been the first headmaster who was also a “literary man… [although] his contributions to literature were of no great importance.” Among his works was a poem recommending the use of laurel leaves as a relief for rheumatism, written on the behest of Lady Gerard of Harrow. In his essay on the early headmasters BP Lascelles, ruefully notes: “As the treatment was efficacious, it is a pity that he has omitted to specify how the laurel leaves were to be used, whether for internal or external application.” Lascelles adds: “He died in Harrow (1691) and was there buried ‘in wool,’ in accordance with the Act in that case made and provided.” The second candidate was the Reverend William Bolton, the prior of St Bartholomew who was also vicar of Harrow. A story in Harrow School and its Surroundings by Percy M Thornton is recounted of him, taking place 1524 which was apparently “indicative of the superstition which prevailed at the epoch in question”. The story goes that: “[Bolton] had listened to the story of certain soothsayers, whose predictions pointed to the swamping of London and its neighbourhood by a sudden rise of the Thames in 1524. Accordingly, he built a house of refuge in Harrow Hill, and is said to have remained two months entrenched therein. Others of the upper classes, says Dr MacKay, in his Memoirs of Popular Delusions, fled to Hampstead, Highgate and the Surrey hills, while on the big day with London’s fate, crowds of less favoured people assembled to see the rising of the waters. When, however, Father Thames rolled on his natural course, the popular indignation was straightaway directed against the false prophets, who only escaped immersion by asseverating that the mistake of a single figure had caused these wise men of the West to fix the date of the expected inundation a century too soon.”
