Old Bradford pubs and inns are one of the most popular topics on local history sites. I mentioned the Sun Hotel or Inn in a recent post, but I thought that we had enough material in the Local Studies Library for a slightly more detailed treatment. It would be of great interest if any reader could add to what I have learned.

We are fortunate that the Sun Inn, located at the bottom of Ivegate, is one of the few places of refreshment marked on the 1802 Bradford map, of which this is a detail. Perhaps it is included because it was a coaching inn. The Bowling Green and the Turls are wide roads which united at the Sun Bridge by the Sun Inn to form Ivegate. I assume the Sun Bridge over the Bradford Beck took its name from the public house, but I don’t know this for certain. The same map helps to provide dating evidence pushing the construction of the Sun Hotel into the eighteenth century.

The eighteenth century, but not older, on the basis of this illustration of William Scruton’s. The oldest date I have ever seen associated with it is 1779 but this, of course, does not eliminate the possibility of there having been an earlier building of the same name at the same site. William Scruton does mention the premises in his Pen & Pencil Pictures of Old Bradford as a ‘leading hotel’. He lists the occupiers from 1807 onwards as: Messrs. Gascoigne, Wade, Hirst, Whiteworth and Harrison. In the same way we also know that Bejamin Robertshaw ran the hotel in 1822 and that finally a Mr Wilman was the last ‘specimen of the old style of landlord’.

A further illustration from the same source suggests that towards the end of its career the building was occupied by a variety of other offices and businesses. The artwork is dated 1901 but clearly demolition had occurred by that date. I believe that Sunbridge Road itself was a new thoroughfare created by Bradford Corporation c.1876. The Sun Hotel doesn’t appear in the PO directories for 1879-80 or 1883.

The above figure is a detail taken from the sale plan that heads this article. In May 1884 the Sun Estate came up for sale. As so often happened the auctioneer was Mr Buckley-Sharp and the sale was to take place at Leuchter’s Restaurant.

The Sun Inn was demolished in 1895 and was replaced by the Prudential Assurance Building. This building was designed by Alfred Waterhouse (also responsible for the Natural History Museum) and is constructed in red brick and terracotta. Personally, I think it is out of place in a stone-built city centre but many people are fond of it, and it remains to this day.

Within two hours of my expressed wish that other local historians might add some additional Sun Inn information I heard from Mary Twentyman of Low Moor. She writes:

Edward Leedes was reported as being at the Sun Inn when he was the JP involved in the Cragg Vale Coiners in 1769.  Also the London Gazette of 21st June 1740 has ” at the House of John Atkinson, being the Sign of the Sun in Bradford.” I think I’ve also seen mention of “the Old Sun Inn” which would be the one before the image you have. It was the place to hold bankruptcy meetings as poor old Edward found out in 1781.

Thanks Mary I am most grateful.