LONDON — They’ll toil and sweat but hopefully without the blood and tears. A London game is more than just a typical road trip for NFL teams. It’s a chance to learn about local history, too.
In fact, the New England Patriots and Jacksonville Jaguars — who play Sunday at Wembley Stadium — don’t even need to leave their practice facilities to do so. The Patriots trained Friday at the exclusive Harrow School, whose most famous alumnus is Winston Churchill. Farther out in the countryside, the Jaguars have been using a practice field that is nearly on top of a maze of World War II air raid shelters.
Harrow consists of 324 acres on a hill overlooking London where Churchill spent his high school years before entering politics and leading Britain through World War II as prime minister. “If any of the Pats players take a break from practice, they should walk around and see the school grounds because they’re quite grand,” said Lee Pollock, a director and senior adviser to the board of the International Churchill Society. A highlight is the Speech Room, where young Churchill recited 1,200 lines from the poem “Lays of Ancient Rome” from memory and won a prize for the feat.
“At Harrow, he learned what he called the most noble thing in the world: the construction of a sentence in the English language,” Pollock said. Patriots coach Jerod Mayo noted another big character — a fictional one — from Harrow’s more recent history. “I’m definitely a big history g.