Ripon Cathedral has marked the centenary of the war poet Wilfred Owen’s 25th and last birthday before his death in 1918 with a dedicated evensong on Passion Sunday and the launch of a Wilfred Owen Pilgrimage trail.
Instead of a sermon, four of the poems that he composed during that time were recited from memory in front of the high altar by the vice-chairman of the Wilfred Owen Association, Sam Gray.
They were the focus of a service of poetry and music held in the Cathedral’s quire and attended by civic dignitaries from the region including Air Cdre Simon Bostock, representing Her Majesty the Queen.
The Wilfred Owen association’s secretary, Yvonne Morris, read from letters written to his mother.
The service was sung by the girl choristers and the lay clerks with the introit and final piece of music sung from the crossing.
It was followed by the launch of a pilgrimage trail around the cathedral based on his life and poems and including the Chapel of Justice and Peace where words from his ‘pity of war’ preface to a book of poems he was intending to publish are carved in a stone tablet.
The Dean of Ripon, the Very Revd John Dobson, said: “We are proud to mark the cathedral’s connection with Wilfred Owen, 100 years to the day that he spent time here on his last birthday, and, given the sombre nature of his work, it is very fitting that we should be doing 
this on Passion Sunday, as we prepare for Holy Week.”
During his time in Ripon, Owen composed or revised several poems, including “Strange Meeting” and “Futility”, but he found his army base too noisy, and so took rooms in a cottage close to the cathedral.
The cottage is owned by Loretta Williams, a member of the cathedral community, who discovered the fireplace in the attic after it had been covered over for several years. It has now been moved to the sitting room. The cottage also has another potential link to Wilfred Owen, a stone ink bottle found under the floorboards in the attic.
He records in a letter to his mother how he spent time sitting quietly in the cathedral on the afternoon of his birthday less than a week after being posted to an army camp in the city to regain his fitness after he had been sent back to England suffering from shell shock.
While in Ripon, he described it a “village-city” which he thought “quite pleasant though not beautiful”.
The River Skell, which runs by the cottage in Borrage Lane he described as “a happy little stream” with “fine views of the cathedral’s towers.”
Wilfred Owen could have stayed on home duty indefinitely after regaining his fitness but chose to return to the front line much against the advice of his friend and fellow war poet Siegfried Sassoon who said he would “stab him in the leg” if he went back.
His mother wrote later – “Oh, how he hated war and all its horrors but he felt he must go out and share it with his boys. His nature never changed.”
Back in France, he led units of the 2nd Manchester Regiment in storming enemy lines at Joncourt when he took over after his commander was injured, resisting a heavy counter attack and behaving, it is recorded, “most gallantly”.
On November 4 he was killed leading a unit over the Sambre-Oise Canal and awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry at Joncourt and promoted to Lieutenant shortly afterwards. The telegram announcing his death was given to his mother as the church bells were ringing to mark the end of the war a week later on Armistice Day.