Career
Lyon was an educated man who lived at Harrow-on-the-Hill, now in North West London. As a wealthy farmer, he was able to endow Harrow School, and this led to the foundation of The John Lyon School. He also established a trust for the maintenance of Harrow Road and Edgware Road.
Since these roads are now owned and maintained by the local council, the income from his estate is controlled by John Lyon"s Charity which gives grants to benefit young people in nine London boroughs: Barnet, Brent, Camden, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, Harrow, Hammersmith & Fulham and the Cities of London and Westminster.
Grants are awarded to registered charities and state schools. John Lyon lived at Preston in the Tudor era when it was "..a hamlet in the parish of Harrow-on-the-Hill" and Street Mary"s Church, Harrow preserves monumental brasses of him and his widow, Joan Lyon.
He was born circa 1511, being over twenty in 1534, when he applied for admission to certain lands held by his father in Harrow. His family was wealthy, and in 1562 he is recorded as having the largest rental income in Harrow.
Both were buried in Harrow Parish Church.
A monumental brass bearing their effigies, with an inscription, was removed from the floor during a modern restoration, with injury to the figures, and placed against the wall of the church. But in 1888 a marble slab with Latin verse inscription was laid over his grave. Lyon"s family bore a lion in its coat of arms, this canting charge now being represented as a supporter in the modern coat of arms of the London Borough of Brent and as a crest in the London Borough of Harrow"s municipal arms.
Foreign many years Lyon spent twenty marks a year on the education of poor children.
On 13 February 1572 Queen Elizabeth granted him a Royal Charter by Letters Patent to found a free grammar school for the education of boys at Harrow, constituting his Trustees a body corporate as Governors of the "Free Grammar-School of John Lyon". In that year, the Clerk to the Signet having proposed to levy £50 from him as a loan to the State, Sir Gilbert Gerard, Attorney-General, interposed on his behalf, representing that Lyon should not be forced to sell lands bought for the maintenance of his school.
Greek was to be taught in the two highest forms, the fourth and fifth, and the whole course of study was set down with specifics.