Saddle Inn, 48 Bradshawgate

The Saddle Hotel, pictured shortly before it closed in 1970. Image taken from the Bolton Library and Museum Service collection (copyright Bolton Council).

The Saddle Hotel dated back to 1790 was originally known as the Weavers Arms. It stood on Bradshawgate, opposite the entrance to Wood Street and just two doors down from the Empire Inn (also known as the Volunteer). 

In his book, Bolton Pubs 1800 – 2000, Gordon Readyhough claims that the pub became known as the Saddle after the landlady married a local saddler. The tale does stand up to some scrutiny. In 1844 the landlady of the Weavers Arms was a spinster named Mary Kirkman. In December of that year she married Seth Holding, a local saddler. Certainly by 1848 the name of the pub had been changed to the Saddle.

While it may not necessarily have become popular with saddlers the pub did have its own club for local painters. However, the club was hit by tragedy in October 1852 with the suicide of the club's secretary Robert Lander. During the lunchtime of Friday 15 October 1852, Lander went to the Saddle and was served with threepence worth of gin by the landlady, Martha Ruff. He then took a green powder from his pocket and poured it into the glass before asking for another threepence worth of gin which he also poured into a glass. He then drank the substance but was found some time later by Mrs Ruff lying semi-conscious on a bench in the pub. She picked up the empty glass and on seeing a green residue at the bottom she gave it to a friend of Lander, William Goodwin. He tasted the substance and said it was some sort of medicine, something the semi-conscious Lander confirmed to Mrs Ruff. Goodwin, however, began to vomit although he was given hot tea that acted an emetic and he suffered no further ill-effects.

Lander was conveyed by cab to his home on Clarence Street but he was attended to by a doctor the following day after complaining of pains in the stomach and in the legs. He was visited by Goodwin although Lander told his friend he hadn't told the doctor about the green substance.

Lander made a partial recovery but died the following week aged just 23. At his inquest it transpired that immediately prior to going to the Saddle he had visited a druggist, Mr Morris, and bought two ounces of Emerald Green, a compound of arsenic and copper. He told Mr Morris it was for a special painting job he was doing but this was the green substance that eventually killed him, the arsenic having absorbed itself into his system. As to the reason for Lander's suicide it was reported that he had asked Mrs Ruff for her hand in marriage and been refused. She had been widowed – for the second time - earlier that year following the death of her husband, the German-born Ferdinand Ruff. At the inquest Mrs Ruff said there had been no intimacy between her and Lander that could have led him to expect that a marriage would have taken place.

By 1854, Martha Ruff had left the Saddle and it was now in the hands of William Morris. The connection with the Morris family was to last for the next 45 years.

Morris was in trouble on two occasions over the hours the pub kept: in July 1861 and in May 1864. On the first occasion he was fined 20 shillings plus costs. The second time he failed to appear in court but sent a woman who said she was in charge of the pub's vaults. On this occasion, though, William Morris was fined 40 shillings plus costs after police visited the vaults at eight o'clock one Sunday morning and found three men with glasses of ale in front of them having been served by the woman in charge. Sunday morning drinking was the most-committed hours offence with regards to pub licensing. It was the only day many people had off but they were expected to attend church on Sunday mornings and pubs officially remained closed until 12.30. Five years later, in 1869, Mr Morris converted his tap room into a restaurant.

Quite often the larger pubs in town had vaults or tap rooms that were reached by an entrance quite separate from the rest of the pub. Indeed, in 1873 the police took a number of pubs to court claiming vaults ought to be separately licensed. The Swan Hotel's vaults – still in existence and since 1992 known as Barrister's – was one of them. 

William Morris's son Nathaniel, was involved in a bizarre incident in 1868 on Crown Street bridge overlooking the River Croal. Young Morris and his companion, William Brierley, a bookkeeper of Kestor Street, fell into the river, a fall of some 40 feet. Morris broke both his thighs in the fall. Brierley wasn’t so lucky and died of his injuries some hours later.

William Morris died in 1872 and the licence of the Saddle was transferred to his widow, Elizabeth. But like her late husband, Elizabeth Morris was now in early seventies and it's likely that she took a back seat and left the running of the pub to her children, most likely to Nathaniel. Even so, she was active enough in 1882 – at the age of 81 – to oversee the catering on behalf of the pub at St George's church for the 50^th anniversary of Reverend Neville Jones' entry into the ministry. How successful the platter was can only be guessed at. The Bolton Evening News of 14 April that year seemed underwhelmed. “The proceedings commenced with what might be termed a cold collation supplied by Mrs Morris of the Saddle Hotel,” the paper's correspondent said.

By 1887 the Saddle was advertising itself on a weekly basis in a new publication, Cricket and Football Field. This Saturday evening newspaper was based in Mawdsley Street in Bolton. It began publication the previous year and published results of local and national sporting fixtures. Some readers may remember it under a later incarnation as The Buff.

Advertisements from the Saddle continued in Cricket and Football Field on a weekly basis until at least 1889. Certainly, this attracted a different kind of customer and a number of sporting bodies began to meet at the pub. The Bolton Cricket Association held its annual presentation night there, the Bolton Charity Cup football competition held its meetings, Bolton Rugby Union club held smoking concerts, while the Lancashire Football League practically made the pub its headquarters having been formed at a meeting there in 1889.

The landlord at this time was Nathaniel Morris (1854-1934) who had succeeded his mother as licensee. However, by 1901 he had given up the pub and was described on the census as a 'retired innkeeper' living at St Annes-On-Sea.

The two driving forces behind the Saddle as the 19^th century drew to a close were another of William Morris's sons, John James Morris, who succeeded Nathaniel as landlord and a man who was already well-known in the world of football, John James Bentley.

Between them the two JJ's had already made their marks outside the pub industry. John Morris was a successful architect who designed Wanderers' new ground at Burnden Park which opened in 1895 as well as the Rumworth Fever Hospital on Hulton Lane. JJ Bentley's football credentials were second to none. Born in Chapeltown near Turton in 1860 he was playing by 1878 for Turton FC – one of the pioneer clubs of football in Lancashire. In 1882 he began his own accountant's practice in Acresfield, just behind the Saddle. He already had experience of journalism having written match reports for Turton FC, but three years after setting up his accounting practice he became a journalist and was soon appointed editor of the influential Athletic News as well contributing columns to the Daily Express and Daily Mail. He also became secretary of Bolton Wanderers in 1885 at a time when the secretary was the de facto manager of the club. When Aston Villa director William McGregor came up with the idea of the Football League in 1888 he approached Bentley because of his influence within the Lancashire game. Bentley sold the idea to clubs in the north-west and Bolton, Blackburn Rovers, Preston North End and Burnley were all founder members when the league began on 30 September 1888. Bentley succeeded McGregor as the league's president in 1894, a position he would hold until 1910. When the League management committee held meetings in the north of the country in the 1890s they were often held at the Saddle.

John James Morris died in 1898. His estate was worth £10,750 – the equivalent today of around £1.3 million. His widow Louisa took on the pub but she soon decided to sell up. She oversaw a meal in April 1899 for the presentation of the Stanley Billiards Cup competed for by Conservative clubs in Westhoughton. The following month there was a meal and presentation for the Bolton Harriers athletics club (president JJ Bentley). But in June 1899 the Saddle Hotel Company Ltd was formed by Bentley to organise the purchase of the pub from Mrs Morris for the sum of £7000 – £880,000 at 2018 prices. Bentley himself became landlord even though he was still president of the Football League although he stepped aside in March 1901 when James Gorton took over.

Bentley was a shrewd operator in business as well as in football. He knew that Bolton Corporation wanted Bradshawgate near its junction with Deansgate. That meant a number of buildings would need to be demolished with the council planning new buildings to be constructed a few feet further back. The Saddle, the Ship Inn,  the Sun  and the Empire (formerly the Volunteer) were among the buildings that would need to be purchased by the council. As we have seen in the case of the Halliwell Lodge,  compulsory purchase powers were not always available and rather than go down the route of having an Act of Parliament passed the council would have to negotiate.

Just how much of a good deal Bentley got for the shareholders of the Saddle Hotel Company only became apparent in 1902. Robert Tootill, a candidate for the East ward in that year's borough elections and a future Labour MP for the town, demanded to know why the pub's “original price was so very seriously increased”. An auditor, Henry Duncan, was appointed by the Corporation to look at this and other matters raised by Mr Tootill.

The original Saddle pub is on the left of Preston's original shop on this image from the 1890s.

On 19 September 1903, the Bolton Evening News published Mr Duncan's report. JJ Bentley had indeed “very seriously increased” the price the Saddle Hotel Company Ltd paid for the pub. Their £7000 in 1899 investment had grown to a final selling price of £12,819 14 shillings and 9 pence in little more than three years. Mr Duncan reported that the pub was now being run as a 'Corporation Hotel' with takings running at between £50 and £56 a week over its first three weeks of operation. A manager was paid a wage of £6 17 shillings a week. But the purchase of the Saddle was to incur additional costs for the council. The owners of the Sun Hotel, realising the Saddle Hotel Company had got much more per yard of land than they did, went back to the Corporation to demand more – and got it.

Sport remained part of the Saddle in the final couple of years before its demolition for the Bradshawgate widening. It could be regarded as Bolton's first sports bar although perhaps not in the manner that we might recognise such an establishment today. However, it was still a venue for meetings and presentations of sporting organisations both local and regional.

Although JJ Bentley was no longer involved with the Saddle the Lancashire Football Association regularly met there. As for Bentley himself, he was regarded as “the most powerful man in English football” in the years before the close of the 19^th century – and yet he was running the Saddle for part of that time. He left the Football League's management committee in 1910 and two years' later he was appointed secretary-manager of Manchester United overseeing the club's relocation from its base at Clayton to Old Trafford. He stepped down from running the first team in 1914. His team-management style involved allowing the players to do as they pleased and that translated to poor results on the pitch. He finally ended his association with the club through ill-health in 1916 and he died at Chapeltown in 1918 at the age of 58.

The Corporation sold the Saddle before the Bradshawgate widening scheme got under way. The purchasers were Ross Monro, a local wine and spirit merchants who also ran a small number of public houses. Among those were the Bay Horse  on Deansgate and the Freemason'sArms  on Market Street in Farnworth. The latter is still known as "Monro's" to this day most likely due to the company's habit of plastering their corporate identity over their pubs at the expense of the pubs' real name.

Ross Monro put forward plans for a new Saddle in February 1904 but the plans were rejected by the Corporation. By now the council owned all the properties between Bromley's shop on the corner of Deansgate and the Pack Horse Hotel but with the exceptions of the Saddle and the Pack Horse. On 26 May 1904 there were applications for a licence for the proposed new Saddle as well as three other pubs: the Sun, the Empire and the Pack Horse. However, a doubt over whether the rebuilt pubs would be licensed was putting the whole of the widening scheme in doubt. Demolition of some of the old buildings had already begun and Bromley's were due to take possession of their land on 1 June – six days afterwards – to commence the building of their new premises. The council faced postponing their plans and a compensation bill of £40,000 so the licences for the three pubs were approved. The Saddle closed in June 1904 when Ross Monro began the sale of all its fixtures and fittings. Like the Pack Horse it was rebuilt and it reopened in 1905 16 feet behind its former site with rooms 12 feet high instead of eight feet to aid sanitation.

The new Saddle still entertained sporting organisations but its function rooms were also used for auctions. It was sold to the Warrington brewer Walker's who merged with Joshua Tetley of Leeds in 1960 to form Tetley Walker.

In the sixties the pub was on the circuit of popular watering holes for weekend drinkers. It also served 'Saddle pies', a delicacy made on the premises.

David Boardman on the I Belong To Bolton Facebook pagewrote: “Fantastic pub even before it was "done up". Could not move inside at the weekends.” Hilda Dearden Jones says:  Only pub to have a juke box in town centre early 60s."

There were also bands on in the upstairs room and Steve Crane says he attended folk clubs upstairs in the sixties. Bob Smalley adds: “Used to go to a folk club in the upstairs room every Sunday night in about 1965. A singer used to play there, a Welsh chap, Mike Stephens, always played a twelve string guitar, was very good. Happy memories.”

The Saddle was finally defeated by another scheme to improve Bradshawgate with the construction of the Arndale Centre. It was one of a block of properties between Fold Street up to but not including the Pack Horse that were all demolished in 1970.

The Arndale Centre was later renamed Crompton Place. Primark now stands on the site of the Saddle.

Stealing A Candlestick – A man named Wm Charnock was brought up for stealing a candlestick from the kitchen of the Saddle Inn, Bradshawgate. Henry Roberts, who was working in an adjoining room, saw the prisoner commit the theft. Charnock stated to the magistrates that he had come from Rochdale, that he had no work, and received 2 shillings a week in parochial relief. The bench committed him for fourteen days as a vagrant. - Bolton Chronicle, 22 April 1848.

Bradshawgate from Fold Street looking up towards Nelson Square pictured around 1900 shortly before the row was demolished for the widening of Bradshawgate. Looking from the street corner, T Bromley’s Fine Art Repository is followed by Preston’s jewellers and then the Saddle. The single-storey building at the far end of the row is the Pack Horse Hotel. Image taken from the Bolton Library and Museum Service collection (copyright Bolton Council).