About
The War Poets Collection is a permanent exhibition and research collection at Edinburgh Napier University's Craiglockhart campus, occupying the building that served between 1916 and 1919 as Craiglockhart War Hospital, where officers suffering from what was then called shell shock were sent for treatment. It was here, in the summer and autumn of 1917, that Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen met, and the collaboration that followed produced some of the most enduring poetry in the English language.
Sassoon arrived in July 1917 having published his Soldier's Declaration, a public statement against the continuation of the war. Rather than court-martial a decorated officer, the authorities had him declared unfit for service and sent to Craiglockhart, where he was treated by the anthropologist and psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers, whose humane approach to war neurosis is now regarded as pioneering. Owen, already a patient under Dr Arthur Brock, was editing the hospital magazine The Hydra. He approached Sassoon for advice, and over the following weeks Owen drafted or substantially revised the poems on which his reputation rests, including Anthem for Doomed Youth and Dulce et Decorum Est. Owen returned to the front and was killed on 4 November 1918, seven days before the Armistice; the telegram reached his mother in Shrewsbury as the bells were ringing for peace.
The collection holds over 800 items relating to Owen, Sassoon and selected contemporary poets, many of them unique, including signed first editions, manuscript material, correspondence, photographs and copies of The Hydra. It also documents other individuals connected with Craiglockhart, among them Rivers and Brock, and the hospital's treatment regimes, which ranged from Rivers's talking therapy to Brock's ergotherapy, or work cure.
The building itself is the collection's greatest asset. Standing in the rooms and corridors where these encounters happened gives the material a force it could never have in a conventional museum, and readers of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, which fictionalises these events, will recognise the setting immediately. Entry is free, though as a working university campus the exhibition keeps academic rather than visitor-attraction hours. It is also, for the same reason, one of the quietest places of comparable literary significance anywhere in Britain: there is no queue, no ticket desk and no crowd between the visitor and the material.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Contact the university before visiting, particularly outside term time. Access follows campus and library arrangements rather than visitor-attraction hours, and vacation closures are substantial.
- Ask about a guided tour or talk if you are visiting as a group. Someone who can point out exactly where things happened transforms a visit to this particular building.
- Read some Owen before you come. Anthem for Doomed Youth and Dulce et Decorum Est both took shape here, and knowing them makes the rooms far more affecting.
- Book an appointment in advance if you want to see specific archive material rather than only the permanent exhibition.
- Take the bus rather than driving. Campus parking is limited and largely reserved for staff and students, and Lothian Buses services along Colinton Road are frequent.
- Readers of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy should allow extra time simply to walk the corridors and grounds, which are described closely in the novels.
- Combine the visit with a walk on the Union Canal towpath or through Colinton Dell on the Water of Leith, both a few minutes away.
- Remember this is a working university. Lecture theatres, offices and study areas are not open to visitors, and term-time weekdays are busy with students.
Highlights
The Building Where Owen Met Sassoon
Craiglockhart was built in 1880 as a hydropathic establishment, a fashionable water-cure hotel, and was requisitioned in 1916 as a military hospital for officers suffering from war neurosis. In the summer of 1917 it held both Siegfried Sassoon, sent there instead of being court-martialled for his public declaration against the war, and Wilfred Owen, then an unknown poet editing the hospital magazine.
Their meeting and the weeks of work that followed changed English poetry.
To stand in the building where that happened is the collection's central offering, and no amount of interpretation elsewhere can substitute for it. The hydropathic's grand public rooms and long corridors survive within the modern campus, so the setting is genuine rather than evoked.
Wilfred Owen's Craiglockhart Months
Owen arrived at Craiglockhart in June 1917 an accomplished but derivative poet writing in a late-Romantic manner. He left in November transformed. Under Sassoon's influence he drafted or substantially rewrote the work on which his reputation stands, including Anthem for Doomed Youth, whose surviving manuscript carries Sassoon's suggestions in his own hand, and Dulce et Decorum Est.
The collection documents these months in detail, and the compression of the change — a matter of weeks in one building — remains one of the most remarkable episodes in modern literary history. Owen published only five poems in his lifetime; Sassoon edited the first collected edition after his death, and the reputation followed.
Siegfried Sassoon's Soldier's Declaration
In July 1917 Sassoon, a decorated officer with a reputation for reckless courage, published a statement refusing further military service, declaring the war was being deliberately prolonged by those with the power to end it. It was read out in the House of Commons. Rather than create a martyr by court-martialling him, the authorities had him declared unfit and sent to Craiglockhart.
The collection documents the Declaration, the manoeuvre that followed and Sassoon's ambivalent months at the hospital before he chose to return to the front, a decision driven less by any change of conviction than by an inability to remain safe while his men were not.
The Hydra, the Hospital Magazine
Owen edited The Hydra, the magazine produced by Craiglockhart's patients, and it published his poem The Dead-Beat as well as work by Sassoon. Copies survive in the collection and are among its most evocative holdings, mixing verse with hospital notices, sporting fixtures and the studiedly light humour of men undergoing psychiatric treatment during the worst war in history to that point.
The gap between the magazine's cheerful surface and what its contributors were actually experiencing tells its own story with considerable eloquence.
Collections
The War Poets Collection at Edinburgh Napier University's Craiglockhart campus comprises over 800 items, many of them unique, focused on the works of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and selected contemporary poets, together with material on other individuals connected with Craiglockhart War Hospital.
Holdings include signed first editions, manuscript material, correspondence, photographs, hospital records and copies of The Hydra, the patient-produced hospital magazine Owen edited. The collection also documents the hospital's medical staff and treatment regimes, notably W.
H. R. Rivers's talking therapy and Arthur Brock's ergotherapy, making it significant for the history of military psychiatry as well as for literary study.
A permanent exhibition is freely accessible; archive material is available to researchers by appointment.
Craiglockhart War Hospital 1916-1919
The permanent exhibition covering the hospital's wartime role, its patients and medical staff, and the treatment of war neurosis, set within the building where it all took place.
Owen, Sassoon and the Poetry of the First World War
Displays of first editions, manuscript material, correspondence, photographs and copies of The Hydra documenting the 1917 meeting of Owen and Sassoon and the work that came from it.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.
Nearby Museums (5 within 6 miles)
Regimental Museum of The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards
Military History
Edinburgh — ~46 min walk (2.4 mi)