In memory of Hugh Carreg Owen
Hugh Carreg Owen was born c.1892. He was educated at the Board School in Pwllheli, and received prizes for good attendance at school in 1901 and in 1902. In 1900 he took part in a Band of Hope children’s meeting at Zion Wesleyan chapel, reciting Jolly, Pony’r Plant.
He moved away to work in the South Wales coal industry. On 14 October 1913, he was underground at Universal Colliery, Senghenydd, when a powerful explosion ripped through the mine. The disaster killed 440 workers but Hugh was rescued. The press later reported that he had shown “remarkable courage” in helping to rescue fellow workmen from the colliery.
After the outbreak of war, he joined the Manchester Regiment. Private Owen was killed, aged 25, on 9 October 1917 during the Third Battle of Ypres, when the Allies and the Germans spent months fighting in the rain and mud for control of the strategically important village of Passchendaele. The poet Ellis Humphrey Evans (“Hedd Wyn”) was killed earlier in the same campaign.
Hugh’s body was never recovered. He is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial, near Ypres.
His mother Margaret Owen, who lived at 31 New Street, Pwllheli, was already a widow by the time of Hugh’s death.
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