Last week Cllr’s Campbell, Downes and myself visited the former Wharfedale Hospital in Otley for an update on the progress of the conversion of the former hospital into 60 homes, which will compromise of 27 townhouses, 8 apartments and 25 ‘new’ build homes.

Of course, up until October 2004 the site on Newall Carr Road functioned as the local hospital but before this  it had the rather dubious honour of being the local workhouse.

Opened in June 1873 at the height of Victorian Britain the main building segregated the boys/males and girls/woman in the main building (more details, courtesy of Peter Higginbottom is available here) and entrance to the building was accessed through the large double doors.

You might be asking what has this got to do with the councillor visit last week?

Whilst looking round the site the development team pointed out the two column’s either side of the main doors and asked us to look closely, whilst regaling us with how the girls lined up on the left and the boys lined up on the right.

We looked and this is what we saw, the left column and right column’s capital (the bit at the top) appear to represent the genitalia of the female form on the left and the male form on the right.

Of course on first look the capital just looks like a classic floral piece but on closer inspection and when compared to the corresponding right column it becomes clear it could easily be a depiction of the vagina.

Looking at the right column’s one sees that it is very different to the left. To all of us there it does like look a penis and pair of testicles, the ‘wind shear’ of 140 years could account for the smallness of the genitalia.

According to the Victoria & Albert Museum the period was one of hypocrisy with a move from the licentious lifestyle of the Regency period to the restrained, repressed and puritan approach being promoted by Mrs Grundy. The V&A however talks of a hypocritical ‘shadow side’ to this public denial was glimpsed, in the ‘secret world’ of Victorian prostitution and pornography.

Now I don’t know if the architect’s Messrs’ C.S. & A.J. Nelson of Leeds deliberately knew what they were doing but either way, as a listed building the main building and its columns will be there for many years to come.