The hospital has its origins in a facility built to treat wounded soldiers during the
Second World War. It opened in 1940 and joined the
National Health Service in 1948. At that time the hospital management took the opportunity to acquire the old
workhouse buildings on an adjacent site to create administrative facilities for the hospital. A new hospital was procured under a
Private Finance Initiative ('PFI') contract in 2001. It was designed by Jonathan Bailey Associates and built by
Bovis Lend Lease at a cost of £54 million. It was officially opened by
Tony Blair,
Prime Minister, in January 2004. In June 2014, the Trust announced that it had borrowed sufficient funds from
Northumberland County Council at a low rate of interest to pay off the consortium who had developed the hospital and buy itself out of the PFI contract. ==Notes==