An inquiry into the ill-treatment of patients at the hospital led to reforms to services for people with intellectual disabilities throughout the UK.

[3] During the Second World War, the Jamaican RAF pilot and future pioneer of Black civil rights in Britain, Billy Strachan, was treated in Ely Hospital for physical injuries he sustained after crashing a Tiger Moth biplane during a training exercise.

[4] In 1969 the hospital was the subject of an official inquiry into the abuse of patients,[5] after allegations about pilfering and ill-treatment had been published in the News of the World on 20 August 1967.

[11] From 2014 to 2016 the Hidden now Heard oral history project gathered stories from former staff, patients and their relatives of six long-stay psychiatric hospitals in Wales, including Ely.

[12][13] Material from the project was used in a 2016 exhibition about Ely Hospital which was displayed in The Hayes, Cardiff, before transferring to the St Fagans National Museum of History.