BORRAGE LANE, RIPON

(Formerly Borage Lane)

Owen arrived in Ripon Army Camp on 12th March 1918 - "an awful Camp". As in London, when during his training with the Artists Rifles he rented a room of his own, he now found a quiet cottage room in Borage Lane, a pleasant rural approach to the city from the training unit which was busily processing squads of young conscripts urgently needed at the front.

Following Siegfried Sassoon's advice that he should write about his war experiences, and using the techniques learned at Craiglockhart, he drew on the events that had led to shell-shock, and during the Spring of 1918 drafted, wrote and re-wrote the poems which still show some of the realities of war. This fruitful period produced poems such as "The Send-Off", "Mental Cases" and possibly "Strange Meeting".

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