The Old Speech Room Gallery & Museum is located in the Old Speech Room, which was built in 1819-1821 as a room to encourage public speaking. The gallery was opened in 1976 to house the School's collections, which include Egyptian and Greek antiquities, English watercolours, Modern British paintings, books and natural history artefacts. There is a set of gilt Easter eggs created by contemporary gold and silversmith Stuart Devlin, which have been designed in the tradition of Fabergé eggs and include surprise interiors. There are also some sculptures, including portrait busts of such Old Harrovians as Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Lord Byron.
The paintings include Sir Winston Churchill's A Distant View of Venice, 1929. Other artists include George Romney, David Jones, Victor Pasmore and Richard Shirley Smith.
The Museum hosts themed exhibits from its collections. Admission is free.
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“So hills and valleys into singing break;
And though poor stones have neither speech nor tongue,
While active winds and streams both run and speak,
Yet stones are deep in admiration.
Thus praise and prayer here beneath the Sun
Make lesser mornings when the great are done.”
—Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)
“For I pray that my typewriter, ever faithful, will not break even though I threw it across the hospital room six years ago.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Each morning the manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“[A] Dada exhibition. Another one! What’s the matter with everyone wanting to make a museum piece out of Dada? Dada was a bomb ... can you imagine anyone, around half a century after a bomb explodes, wanting to collect the pieces, sticking it together and displaying it?”
—Max Ernst (1891–1976)