The current hospital cost £15 million to build and was opened on 26 January 2005 by HRH The Princess Royal. It provides in-patient beds for older patients and is a significant centre for day surgery, as well as housing a range of clinics and departments, including a Minor Injuries Unit.
The new building replaced the former Wharfedale Hospital on the same site which had origins going back to its formation as a workhouse in 1873. An infirmary with 70 beds was added in 1907 and was administered by the Wharfedale Board of Guardian until 1930. After 1938 it was known as Otley County Hospital and later Wharfedale General Hospital.
A parliamentary report of 1777 recorded local workhouses in operation at: Guiseley (for up to 80 inmates), Horsforth (80), and Otley (35).
The entrance block facing east onto Newall Carr Road contained the Guardians' board-room and vagrants' wards. Entrance to the workhouse was through an archway at the centre. This originally had ornate wrought-iron gates.
In the main block, males were housed in the west wing, and females in the east. To the rear of the main building were the dining-hall (which also served as a chapel) and the kitchens. There was also a laundry on the women's side.
The original infirmary stood at the north of the site and was described by The Builder as "upwards of 140 ft. long. In the centre of this block are the necessary officers' and administrative rooms, and on each side respectively are the male and female wards, the whole being well lighted and ventilated with windows on both sides." The infirmary was later used as an infirm block and, in more recent times, for administrative accommodation.
In 1888, the Guardians were given authorisation to spend the sum of £516 on the erection of an iron hospital for accommodating infectous cases. In 1905-7, a new 70-bed infirmary was built to the west of the main block. At the north-east of the site was the workhouse mortuary which contained three slabs. The building also contained coal and wood sheds, and a piggery.
Work for permanent male inmates included the chopping up of old railway sleepers into firewood which was then sold to the public and delivered on hand-carts. Work for casuals (vagrants) mostly consisted of picking oakum (old ropes) whose fibres were then used to make mats. Vagrants were not allowed into the workhouse if they had any money or tobacco, so used to secrete any that they had in cracks in a wall just outside the workhouse gates until their departure the next day.
Following the Local Government Act of 1930, the workhouse was taken over by the local council and became known as Otley County Institution and then later as Otley County Hospital. A plan of the site made in 1930 shows its layout at that date. As well as the hospital buildings, it shows extensive vegetable gardens at the south of the site, piggeries near the main entrance at the north-east, and poultry sheds at the north-west. The casual block was was still largely operated on the association system, with a 6-bed women's ward used both for eating and sleeping, while the men's side included an 11-bed ward, a 32-bed ward, and 8 separate cells. The male casuals' bathroom contained two baths and two shower baths.
In 1940, a row of hutted temporary wards was erected at the west of the site, presumably as part of the Emergency Medical Scheme (EMS). Some of the huts were reserved by for housing enemy prisoners of war. After the inauguration of the National Health Service in 1948, the site became Otley General hospital, later renamed Wharfedale General Hospital.
In 2000, thanks to the efforts of the Otley Conservation Task Force, the main workhouse buildings acquired listed building status. However, the hospital's relocation to an adjacent site in 2004 have left the old buildings empty and their future uncertain.