#Edinburgh - Craiglockhart

In the early 1990s I worked at (then) Napier Polytechnic. I went past the building recently and had a nostalgic visit to the building that has a colourful history. In 1877, the estate became the property of the Craiglockhart Hydropathic Company, who set about building a hydropathic institute. The Hydropathic was built in the Italian style. Craiglockhart remained as a hydropathic, until the advent of the First World War. Between 1916 and 1919 the building was used as a military psychiatric hospital for the treatment of shell-shockedofficers. Probably the most famous patients of Craiglockhart were the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owenanti-war letter. The best known of the doctors assigned there was W. H. R. Rivers. The Hospital featured in the 1991 book Regeneration by Pat Barker – and the 1997 film adaptation by the same name – and in which the institution was known as Craiglockhart War Hospital. The building then became a convent for the Society of the Sacred Heart, before serving as a Catholic teacher training college. It then passed to the then Napier College, and was used by that institution and its successor, Napier Polytechnic. It is now part of Edinburgh Napier University. Much of the old building has been retained, but an extensive new wing has been built behind it to house the Business School.