Edinburgh Napier University

​Edinburgh Napier University is one of the largest higher education institutions in Scotland with over 17,000 students from 109 countries. We offer industry informed courses which combine the optimum balance of theory and practice, to equip our graduates for success today's competitive global job market.

When Napier University, now Edinburgh Napier, bought the former Craiglockhart College of Education in 1984, a large Victorian building, we did more than just accommodate our expanding needs, we acquired a piece of history.

Craiglockhart originally opened as a Hydropathic in 1880 but was requisitioned by the military during the First World War for use as a hospital for the treatment of shell-shocked officers.

It was here, in 1917, that the poets Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) first met. Within these walls, some of Owen's and Sassoon's greatest war poetry was inspired and written, and their resulting friendship was to have a significant and lasting effect on literature, influencing our view of the war. On the medical front, significant advances were made in the treatment of neurasthenia (shell shock) and the development of psychiatry. The work of the doctors at Craiglockhart was ground-breaking for the time and the friendship between Sassoon and his doctor, Dr William H.R. Rivers was to become life-long.

Today, the building houses the University's Business School and is home to the War Poets Collection - one of several special collections available for consultation in our libraries. A permanent exhibition now allows visitors to view the collection, and gain an insight into the personal and social experiences of war through the words, memories, voices and objects that the officers, medical staff and relatives left behind.