PINNER, a parish in the hundred of GORE, county
of MIDDLESEX, 2 miles (N.W. by W.) from Harrow
on the Hill, containing 1076 inhabitants. The living is
a perpetual curacy, in the peculiar jurisdiction of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, endowed with £1000 private
benefaction, £400 royal bounty, and £900 parliamentary
grant, and in the patronage of the Vicar of
Harrow. The church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist,
is a large edifice, chiefly of flints, erected in 1321; in
it lies interred Sir Bartholomew Shower, an eminent
lawyer in the time of James II. Pinner received a grant
of a weekly market from Edward III., and two fairs,
one on the nativity of John the Baptist, and the other
on the decollation of the same saint. At this place
died, in 1798, John Zephaniah Holwell, who had been
Governor of Bengal, and who published a curious and
interesting account of his confinement, with many other
persons, in the Black Hole at Calcutta.