Pictures from the Past
Owen was born on 18 March 1893 near Oswestry in Shropshire
From 1913 he worked as a private tutor teaching English and French at the Berlitz School of Languages in Bordeaux, France and later with a family. There he met the older French poet Laurant Tailhade, with whom he later corresponded in French. When war broke out, Owen did not rush to enlist – and even considered the French army – but eventually returned to England.
On 21 October 1915, he enlisted in the Artists Rifles Officers’ Training Corp. For the next seven months, he trained at Hare Hall Camp (Built in 1769 and now the Royal Liberty School) . He lived in the building that was originally built as the tea rooms for the 1911 exhibition and is now the home of Gidea Park College. On 4 June 1916, he was commissioned as a second Lieutenant (on probation) in the Manchester Regiment. He was wounded and returned to Scotland for treatment where he met Siegfried Sassoon and the influence of both the war and Sassoon led him to write his well known poems describing the horrors of the war.. He returned to France in July 1918 and on 1 October 1918 Owen led units of the Second Manchesters to storm a number of enemy strong points near the village of Joncourt.
For his courage and leadership in the Joncourt action, he was awarded the Military Cross He was killed in action on 4th November 2018, a week before the armistice was signed and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant the day after his death.
The Arts and Crafts movement, flourishing in Britain between 1880 and 1920, rejected mass production in favour of creativity and individualism. Opulent, fussy decoration was ditched for craftmanship, honest design, traditional building techniques and ordinary materials such as stone and tiles. External features were often built with traditional, local materials and designed to clearly express their structural function. Its adherents – artists, architects, designers, writers, craftsmen and philanthropists – were united by a common set of aesthetics, that sought to reassert the importance of design and craftsmanship in all the arts in the face of increasing industrialization, which they felt was sacrificing quality in the pursuit of quantity.
Architecture
The architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement was its most radical and influential aspect, and architects such as Webb, Voysey, M. H. Baillie Scott (1865-1945), Norman Shaw (1831-1912) and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, developed principles which not only influenced 19th century architecture but would later become the touchstones of twentieth-century architects. These included the belief that design should be dictated by function, that vernacular styles of architecture and local materials should be respected, that new buildings should integrate with the surrounding landscape, and that freedom from historicist styles was essential. The result was a number of buildings – especially houses for the middle class – that architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner called ‘fresher and more aesthetically adventurous than anything done at the same time abroad’. These architectural canons fed the growing Garden City movement in Britain in the early twentieth century, which brought together on a large scale Arts and Crafts design and Morris’s social reform ideals. The Garden City movement was based on the theories of Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928), as put forward in his highly influential book, Tomorrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform, 1898 (later revised as Garden Cities of Tomorrow in 1902). Howard’s social policies advocated the creation of small, economically self-sufficient cities throughout the country, with the aim of halting urban sprawl and overcrowding. Numerous such cities were built, with varying degrees of success, and the ordinary home became the focal point of progressive architects throughout the country.
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In an anti-clockwise direction commencing from the intersection of Eastern Avenue East (A12) with Pettits Lane, in a south easterly direction to Raphael Park continuing along the western boundaries of Raphael Park and Lodge Farm Park, then south to the railway line continuing along the south side of the railway line (including Gidea Park Railway Station and the properties immediately adjacent to the station) in an easterly direction to the intersection of the of the railway line with the Southend Arterial Road (A127) to Gallows Corner, thence in a north westerly direction along Eastern Avenue East to the commencement point