About the station

HWD Hospital Radio is a registered charity and celebrated an amazing 50 years on the air in September 2002.

Our first broadcast was a live commentary on a rugby match at Batley’s Mount Pleasant stadium in 1952.

The service soon began to grow and so started a regular record request programme in the late 1950s.

HWD Hospital Radio moved to Batley General Hospital in the early 1960s taking up residence in the attic!

From here the station could be heard in all three local hospitals (Batley, Dewsbury General and Staincliffe) as well as five residential care homes around the Heavy Woollen District.

In the late 1980s NHS restructuring amalgamated the existing hospitals into a new site and Dewsbury & District Hospital was born.

The building of the new hospital meant a rapid fund raising effort was required - we felt we needed to raise £15,000 to build a state-of-the-art studio facility.

The studio complex and the hospital itself were opened by Margaret Thatcher in 1989, beginning a new chapter in the history of HWD Hospital Radio.

Further developments continued during the 1990s - a new studio was added in 1997 and we opened a refurbished Studio One in time for the millennium.

This studio has since been given a further refurbishment to allow digital equipment to be installed along with software which allows us to broadcast 24 hours a day.