Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to be asked to carefully remove a branch from a Sycamore at Napier University Craiglockhart Campus, where Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon convalesed during World War I.
The Edinburgh violin maker Steve Burnett – creator of the famous ‘Sherlock Violin’, wished to commemorate the 100th year of the start of WWI by making a violin from a branch of a tree growing in the grounds of the former Craiglockhart Hospital; the tree chosen was a Sycamore that would have been growing when the war poets were residing there, and would have been seen by them from the hospital windows.
Steve made the violin from green wood – a very difficult and time consuming process – and it was given its first airing at The Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh.
Listen to the story on Radio Scotland, ‘The Sycamore Sings: The Wilfred Owen Violin‘ [story no longer available, link edited].
The programme is aired on Monday 4th August at 11:03-11:31, and repeated on Wednesday 6th August at 13:32-14:00 and Thursday 7th August 05:02-05:30.