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Original Text (Annotation: EAW024231 / 2024831)
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I think that this structure and the similar structures on the adjacent platforms are lift shaft winding gear housings. There was a service lift connecting the Royal Mail sorting office in College Road with the passenger subway connecting the station platforms. There were other lifts serving the various platforms and one, I believe, at the Lowland Road side of the station, where there used to be a station parcels office. It was probably this office that later served as the London Transport ticket clearing office, when such tasks were still required to be completed manually.
Presumably the lifts were intended to facilitate the movement of mail and parcels to and from the sorting office and the parcels office for transportation on trains.
I imagine that the facility was used, when it was used at all, on the British Railways services that stopped at Harrow. I don't think that London Transport offered such services at this time. I remember the lifts looking derelict and unused in the 1960s and I certainly never saw them operating. Latterly, newspapers were delivered by train (probably on the service from Marylebone). '