Owen lived here from September 1911 to February 1913 working as a lay assistant to the Revd. Herbert Wigan. During this period his sympathies for "the underdog" became apparent; busy around the parish, talking with the old and the sick, the barely literate and the poverty-stricken, often in wretched cottages and enduring a prolonged period of agricultural depression. His stay here ended with a collapse which was both physical and emotional and he returned to his home in Shrewsbury depressed and unwell.