Half a century ago, Skipton welcomed the then Princess Royal to the town. It was the third official visit to the town by HRH Princess Mary – the Queen’s late aunt.

In 1932, she had opened the hospital – then called the Whinfield Hospital – and on a sunny Tuesday, August 15, 1961, she returned to Skipton General Hospital – as it had become – to open its new £125,000 outpatient department. Her other visit to the district was again made in the early 1930s when she opened Silsden Playing Fields.

Reporter Lesley Tate looks back at the history of the hospital.

The Craven Herald described the opening of the new hospital, on Keighley Road, as a true “red letter day” for the town. It replaced the original and first Skipton Hospital, built in Granville Street, now the site of Craven District Council.

Since the opening of that first hospital, Skipton had developed a health service, second to none, the paper reported.

The hospital had not been a gift from the National Health Service, or by some benevolent benefactor, but the result of the hard work of Craven people.

For almost 50 years, the area’s main hospital had run in Granville Street as a voluntary institution and maintained wholly by the generosity of the people of Craven.

It was opened in 1899 by Lady Frederick Cavendish and was often referred to as Skipton Cottage Hospital.

Every year, thousands of pounds were raised for the hospital through the town’s gala.

“Skipton General Hospital is not a complex, impersonal machine, dedicated to medicine,” reported the Herald.

“Within the usual discipline which is necessary for the running of any hospital, there is warmth and friendliness and the Princess Royal must have detected this on her visit.”

The hospital in Granville Street was closed in 1932 and moved to the new Whinfield Hospital, where the number of patients treated quickly grew from 355 in 1931 to 739 in 1933 and by 1939, it had reached 854.

The old Granville Street site was taken over by Skipton Rural District Council.

Whinfield was opened on August 3, 1932 by the Princess Royal. The Princess, who was staying at Clitheroe, formally opened the hospital with a golden key before being shown around the building by civic dignitaries. As with her later visit to the hospital, she was greeted warmly by the waiting crowds.

Public contributions remained high, not just with the annual gala, but with the Ball Committee and the Ladies Linen League. There was also a new contributory scheme, made by working people. The scheme became the hospital’s largest source of income and in its last year, 1947, before the state took over, it had reached £2,860.

By 1947, the hospital was treating 1,189 inpatients and 14,306 outpatients. In 1960, the number of inpatients treated had risen to 1,336, but the number of outpatients treated had almost doubled to 28,224.

In her 1961 speech to the assembled great and good of Craven – in a specially erected tent in the hospital grounds – Her Royal Highness talked about a new trend in healthcare – a move to preventative medicine and reflected in the large number of outpatients being treated.

“I understand that a large part of the new extensions here consist of an outpatient department, rather larger than would normally be provided in a hospital of this size, but one in which it is hoped to treat numbers of people daily, rather than to admit them all as in-patients,” she said at the time.

“Work in this new department will be watched with interest. It is now generally agreed that no matter how excellent hospitals are, all things being equal, a patient is happier if he can remain at home.”

Chairman of the Leeds Regional Hospital Board, Major JC Hunter, deputy lieutenant, said that the hospital board had come to the decision that Skipton should become a future district hospital for the whole of Craven area and eventually provide a whole range of specialities with full consultant service.

He said that it might seem that the new departments had been built on a generous scale, but care had to be taken to provide for future development.

And by providing greater outpatient facilities, it would be easier to treat them without having to admit them as inpatients.

The Princess Royal, herself a trained nurse, spent a considerable amount of time inspecting the new equipment, reported the Herald.

Each unit was explained to her by the medical staff in charge and during her tours of the wards, she had a word for every patient.

The Herald reported that the Princess Royal was “especially captivated” by the three-day-old twins of Mrs Hamilton, who had formerly been a staff nurse at the town’s Raikeswood Hospital.

Major Hunter said as a general practitoner hospital, Skipton General had done sterling work for the people of Craven.

He said after considerable thought, it had been the decision of the board to make the hospital a future district hospital centre for the whole of Craven. In time, it would be built up to provide residents with all normal hospital specialities and a full consultant service.

He said the new outpatient department had been a milestone in its development as a centre.

He added that the hospital’s development would not have been possible without the support of local GPs and for their support of the board’s proposals.

A large crowd of townspeople and visitors thronged the hospital entrance and grounds in glorious sunshine to give the Princess Royal a warm greeting, signalised by a hearty handclap.

Most of them awaited her departure to give another demonstration of loyalty and affection.

In the evening, the huge marquee was crowded with members of staff and original members of the hospital board who attended the opening of Whinfield in 1932. Amongst them was 89-year-old James Moorhouse, a former president of the Skipton Hospital Gala.

Interested members of the public were also invited to an open day at the hospital when they were able to see the new facilities.