Owen was severely traumatised by his experiences of front line trench warfare, which included being trapped for days next to the dead body of a fellow officer.
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British Library / Owen Estate
Craiglockhart’s small staff of doctors and nurses treated somewhere between 1,500 and 1,800 patients during the years it was operating as a shell shock hospital.
As well as their formal treatments with medical staff, patients at Craiglockhart were encouraged to be as active as possible. Captain Brock, Owen's doctor, encouraged him to write and edit The Hydra, the hospital magazine.
But it was through the poetry he produced at Craiglockhart that Wilfred Owen created his literary legacy.
Siegfried Sassoon offered Owen guidance, which can be seen in his handwritten notes on a number of drafts.
Wilfred Owen returned to the frontline following his spell in Craiglockhart and was killed on 4 November 1918, just a week before Armistice was declared.
Sassoon would also return to the front. Despite being shot in the head, he recovered and returned home. After the war, he arranged for Owen’s poems to be posthumously published, preserving them for future generations.
