The first patients were already on their way. It was to be only a brief journey for them of some 200 yards, but the distance in clinical terms between the Frank Ellis Unit and Oxford’s newly-opened cancer hospital is immense.

They were leaving behind a temporary building that has somehow continued to remain in service at the Churchill Hospital for more than 40 years, housing wards for seriously ill patients.

Ahead of them lay a new £109m cancer centre, offering the most innovative inpatient and outpatient facilities for cancer patients, including ten new operating theatres, an eight-bed intensive care unit and state-of-the-art radiotherapy facilities.

As they were being pushed in their beds along the pristine corridors, some of the first inpatients were too poorly to appreciate their part in a little moment of history, awaited by some of the staff for 20 years.

But last week, a city so long associated with such celebrated cancer scientists as Sir Richard Doll and Sir Richard Peto, could finally claim to have a facility for patients worthy of its reputation as a centre of pioneering research into a disease that takes hold in one in three people.

Fittingly, one of the first doctors to enter the oncology ward last Thursday to see patients suffering from head and neck cancer, was the lead cancer consultant Dr Chris Alcock.

He had first arrived at the sprawling warren of buildings that had made up the Churchill Hospital more than 28 years ago, as a promising 30-year-old senior registrar, specialising in cancer. He still recalls the reaction of his wife on first seeing the shabby set of temporary structures from the Second World War.

“You are not going to work there,” she had told him.

For almost all the years he has been in Oxford he and fellow consultants in the Department of Oncology have been campaigning, complaining, cajoling and pleading with a long line of chief executives to back the creation of a multi-million-pound centre.

The hospital that opened its doors to inpatients last week has far exceeded all his expectations.

“I’m really very happy,” he told me, as we sat in the still largely empty new building, with staff still busily unpacking boxes and workmen applying finishing touches. “I’m happy, not just for myself but for the many people who’ve put in a huge amount of work over many years. Patients and staff have been heavily involved with the planning. And we have finished up with a wonderful place that will ensure first-rate, rather than second- or third-rate, treatment.”

He often feared he might have retired by the time it opened. “There were just so many points when it could have just all fallen apart.”

The quality of the new building will help attract and retain top doctors, nurses and radiographers, with 100,000 patients expected to be treated at the centre each year, and about 800 staff working in what is certain to become one of the UK’s leading centres for cancer treatment and research.

It includes 217 beds and a whole range of costly diagnostic facilities including CT scanner, ultrasound, radiology and mammography. It will also house six £1m linear accelerators, which scan patients for tumours.

The Jane Ashley Breast Cancer Ward is transferring from the Churchill to the second floor and will be combined with gynaecological care, with wards for patients needing treatments for stomach and bowel cancer. Additional equipment and facilities have been made possible through a £2m fundraising campaign, including the purchase of computerised integrated theatres that enable surgeons to carry out more complex keyhole surgery.

The hospital will also include the Wytham Wing, providing 20 beds for private patients.

Even before any patients had arrived, the centre has been visited by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and picked up an award as the most energy efficient healthcare building in the UK. This is largely in recognition of its geothermal heating systems, based on a pump that conducts heat from 100m below the earth’s surface. (In the summer, this works in reverse to remove heat from the building and provide a cooling system.) It is all a far cry from what was first proposed by Churchill staff, who back in 1989 formed the Radiotherapy Improvement Group, initially in order to provide facilities such as a children’s play area, a quiet room and carpets.

As other places like Leicester, Cheltenham and Cambridge were developing new cancer facilities, the Oxford staff became increasingly despairing about the state of the Second World War buildings, where water would come through the roof in wet weather.

When the doctors proposed a major public appeal, they were informed by the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust that there was simply no room for another major appeal, with plans for a new accident and emergency unit at the John Radcliffe and a children’s hospital appeal well in hand.

Ultimately, funding became available with the arrival of the Private Finance Initiative. The controversial scheme will leave the trust having to pay back sizeable payments over at least 30 years, with some aspects of running the centre handed over to a private company.

Dr Alcock said he came to regard PFI as “the only game in town” and argues construction work would not have begun in January 2006 without it.

Crucially, the building will mean the vast majority of cancer services will be brought on to one site, although this will be done in a phased programme over the coming weeks, with no attempt to repeat the effort that saw patients and staff moving from the Radcliffe Infirmary to the JR over a weekend. It will end the unhappy situation which saw cancer patients sometimes having to travel between three hospitals for their treatment.

The centre will also mean staff based at the Churchill campus can form effective cancer multi-disciplinary teams, made up of various health professionals (such as surgeons, cancer specialist doctors, specialist nurses, plastic surgeons, occupational therapists and dieticians) who will work together to best manage treatment.

“In the past,” explained Dr Alcock, “a cancer patient might have radiotherapy, chemotherapy or surgery. Nowadays many patients get a combination of all these. In addition, the site is immediately adjacent to two major cancer research facilities to promote close contact between research doctors and the doctors on the ward. Clinicians here will be working closely with scientists from Oxford University and bodies such as Cancer Research UK. It will be a base for high-level research and clinical trials, while patients will have access to the latest treatments and procedures.”

Joanne Clarkson, assistant project manager, has spent ten years preparing for the arrival of these first patients.

“It will seem strange when the place is no longer empty,” she said, as she gave me a personal tour of what are effectively three strategically inter-connected buildings.

The buildings are organised horizontally, with outpatient services on the ground level, and support and patient beds on the upper floors. Diagnostic services are located on the ground floor to create easily navigated routes for short-term outpatient visits and referrals.

The light that floods into the building and feeling of space resulted directly from the consultation with patients. The impact was apparent when a thousand people turned up for the open day a few weeks ago, with some of them walking around with tears in their eyes. The radiotherapy units are referred to as bunkers because the walls are one-metre thick. But even there, a light well has been incorporated into the unit’s entrance.

Ron Vestry, the architect responsible for the cancer centre, says the designs were influenced by the belief that no one should be separated from the cycle of nature and sights and sounds of the natural environment.

He said: “The primary objective was to enhance a patient’s experience, while enriching the staff’s work environment. By placing major circulation along the building’s perimeter, the design team effectively integrated natural daylight into corridors, while capturing views outside.

“As you stroll along a hospital street, your views through the continuous windows are directed towards the countryside, into a landscaped courtyard, or over a roof garden “The interior design draws inspiration from the hospitality industry, encouraging an environment of healing and well-being, while enhancing the recuperative process.”

Materials used reflect patterns from nature, with distinctive artwork focused on images from nature, like forests, meadows, and the sea. The exterior design is a series of distinct pavilions and towers set in a staggered pattern above a ground-level plinth, all connected by glazed curtain-wall links.

Monday saw the arrival of the first oncology outpatients, with market researcher Kim Taylor, 51, among them. Following an hysterectomy, she had to undergo a course of radiotherapy treatment at the Churchill.

“I’m here at the new cancer centre so staff can assess where my treatment should go from here,” she said.

And her verdict?

“I’m very impressed with the place.”