If you’ve ever taken a walk through the woods off Old Redding near the viewpoint, you’ve probably spotted it through the trees. Most people don’t give it a second thought. They should.
Grim’s Dyke Hotel has one of the most fascinating histories of any building in the borough, and the story goes back much further than most people realise.
The name itself is ancient. The dyke refers to a prehistoric earthwork stretching three miles from Pinner Hill to Bentley Priory, built by the Catuvellauni tribe as a defensive boundary against the Romans. When WS Gilbert lived at the house in the 1890s, he used to point out to guests the spot where, according to local legend, Boadicea poisoned herself to escape the Romans. Whether that’s true or not, it gives you a sense of the history buried in this corner of Harrow Weald.
The house itself was built in 1870 for the Victorian painter Frederick Goodall, who had spent years longing to leave London for the countryside. He bought 110 acres of land in Harrow Weald and commissioned the architect Richard Norman Shaw to design him a home. Shaw produced something distinctive — red brick with Bath stone dressings, high gabled roofs, tall clustered chimneys, leaded windows. A contemporary review described it as “an artistic house for an artist by an artist.” Many of the trees and rhododendrons Goodall planted in the 1870s are still standing today.
In 1890 Goodall sold up and the house was bought by Sir William Gilbert, the lyricist and playwright behind the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Gilbert spent the last two decades of his life at Grim’s Dyke, farming the land, tending the gardens and entertaining guests. He added a sunken rose garden and extended the grounds considerably.
He died there in May 1911, aged 74, in circumstances that have become part of local legend. A young woman got into difficulty while swimming in the lake on the estate. Gilbert dived in to save her. He never came back up. His wife stayed on at the house until her own death in 1936.
After that the house passed through several different uses. During the Second World War it served as a backup site for Bletchley Park and reportedly hosted meetings between Churchill and Roosevelt. From 1940 to 1963 it was used as a tuberculosis rehabilitation unit, with patients helping to maintain the gardens. It was then that the film industry discovered it.
The list of productions filmed in the house and grounds is remarkable. Doctor Who brought the Daleks to Harrow Weald in 1967. The Avengers filmed here. So did The Saint, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and The Champions. Hammer Horror used the house repeatedly throughout the late 1960s for productions including The Blood Beast Terror and Curse of the Crimson Altar. Agatha Christie’s Endless Night was filmed in the grounds. Ronnie Barker brought his cameras here for Futtocks End. EastEnders and Little Britain followed in later years.
Harrow Council acquired the building in 1969 on a 999 year lease and it reopened as a hotel in 1971. In 1996 the current owners took over and spent £3 million on a restoration supervised by English Heritage.
Today it’s a four star hotel with 47 rooms, a restaurant called Gilbert’s, a library bar and 40 acres of woodland and formal gardens that are open to the public throughout the year. The murder mystery weekends are enormously popular and regularly sell out. The Grim’s Dyke Opera Company performs Gilbert and Sullivan works there twice a month.
Most people who walk past it on a Sunday morning with their dogs have no idea any of this happened here. Worth knowing about.
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Chris Mitchell is the founder and editor of Harrow Online, Harrow’s leading local news platform.
He launched Harrow Online in 2010 as a Facebook page sharing local news and information. Since then, it has grown into a trusted source for breaking news, crime, council decisions, planning, transport, business and community stories across the borough.
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