The main hospital at Odstock was built in 1942 by the US Army to support the Salisbury General Infirmary in receiving casualties from the D-Day landings in World War Two.

At the end of the war the hospital was handed over to the Salisbury Health Authority and replaced with new buildings. In the early years a new Burns Unit was built which was considered state-of the-art for its time and, in the intervening years, a Rehabilitation Department and Macmillan Unit were built. A spinal injuries treatment centre was also built and opened by HRH the Prince of Wales and HRH the Princess of Wales in 1984.

With these developments Odstock Hospital became the centre for specialist services for the Wessex region. Now the spinal unit serves a population of 11 million people and covers most of southern England.

In 1987 work started on Phase 1 of the new Salisbury District Hospital site. This was so that all NHS hospital services in Salisbury would be centred on the same site.  In 2004, work started on the major extension to the hospital  - phase two of the site development. OML will move into its new bespoke facility in April 2007.