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Newmarket, as they say, is not a one horse town.

In fact, Newmarket probably has more horses than any other town in the country for this is the headquarters of British flat racing and has been since the time of Charles II . Even before that, Charles’s grandfather, James I, was a visitor, using the area for hunting and hawking and so was his father, Charles I, who was developing some equestrian interest until he lost more than his shirt in the Civil War.

But when the no-fun Commonwealth passed and the Crown was restored, Charles II concentrated almost exclusively on the nags. Today, the town has the National Stud, the British Horse Racing Museum and Tattersalls blood stock sales, not to mention some very extensive and expensive racing stables and studs tucked into the folds of the surrounding countryside.

Tucked into the streets and lanes of the town itself meanwhile are the ancillary trades - the farriers and saddle makers,- and of the latter, one is continuing the royal connection. For up Sales Paddock Lane, a steep street leading to a Tattersalls entrance, is the firm of Gibson Saddlers Ltd, saddle makers by Royal Appointment.

Gibsons cannot perhaps claim to go right back to back to the House of Stuart but the firm has been around for a while now. It was founded - though under another name - outside Newmarket in the early 1900s by one Colonel Gibson and moved into the town - by then under the Gibson banner - in the 1950s. It was acquired in the mid 1960s by Willie Stephenson, a well known trainer based in Royston with some major National Hunt and flat racing winners to his name; he trained winners of both the Derby and the Grand National, the only living Englishman to do so at the time. He ran the saddlery business with his daughter, Liz, who, from the late ‘70s, also ran the Newmarket Saddlery with her husband, Mike. In 1984, Gibsons and the Newmarket Saddlery were combined into the single operation known as Gibson Saddlers Ltd which, since Liz’s sad and untimely death last year, is now run by Mike and his son Karl.

Mike takes up the story. ‘The firm’s Royal Appointment was actually received in 1932 and we are still the exclusive supplier of Royal racing colours today. We have made show bridles for The Queen, racing colours for The Queen Mother, a saddle for Prince Charles and eventing equipment for the Princess Royal’.

Sheikh Mohammed, crown prince of Dubai who is a major presence in Newmarket - and indeed British - racing with extensive property holdings in and around the town, is also a regular customer.

‘He rides in endurance events both in the UK and Dubai - over distances of 100 miles or more in Dubai - and last year he wanted a lighter saddle. We crafted a design which at 3.5kg, was about a quarter of the weight of a normal saddle for that purpose and the Sheikh promptly won the Dubai Endurance Gold Cup with the first prize of a Rolls Royce.’

Unsurprisingly, the Sheikh has ordered more - lightness comes at the cost of durability and these saddles are not designed for much more than one such event - and the firm has now supplied them. It also supplies all of his racing colours.

Much of its non-commissioned production is sold through the on-site shop which itself is worth a visit. Walk in and after the welcoming smell of leather, the first thing you notice is a stuffed horse. And this is no ordinary horse but one Robert the Devil, trained at Palace House in Newmarket, who was second in the Derby of 1880. That day, he was beaten by a horse named Bend Or whom he subsequently beat three times that same season. That year he won £24,000 which was a considerable amount of money at the time. Robert the Devil came from another firm of saddlers, Boyce & Rogers, which Gibsons took over in the early 1960s complete with the workforce and Robert who had hitherto been standing very still in the Boyce & Rogers High Street shop.

But it is in the workshops at the back where Gibsons’ real work is done. In one, half a dozen craftsmen can turn out perhaps 15 racing exercise saddles in a week although they do produce many different types from substantial hunting saddles weighing 13kg or so down to racing saddles which can weigh as little as eight ounces. The leather, bought from a tannery in Milton Keynes, is cut to shape on presses to next to the workshop and then different parts of the hide are put to different uses according to durability and flexibility. A handmade saddle can cost up to £1000 although machined saddles cost significantly less. The firm also makes the full range of tack including head collars and bridles, the design of the latter sometimes changing with the racing results in that whatever design a winning horse is known to have used, other stables will often want that too. The same goes for racing saddles.

In the other workshop, the firm produces hand-stitched racing silks and also the blankets and racing presentation sheets which the horses wear in the parade ring and, if things go well, the winner’s enclosure. Again the firm works for many different owners and stables in addition to its royal clients - last year, it made colours for Andrew Lloyd-Webber - and it regularly turns out sheets for corporate customers who perhaps are sponsoring races and who want the company logo or banner to appear before the punters and TV cameras in the winner’s enclosure.

Gibsons gets the occasional unusual request, says Mike.

‘Ralph Lauren are doing a promotion in their Bond Street premises at the moment and we have supplied three saddles and six bridles for that. A couple of years ago, we provided exhibition saddles to the Hong Kong Jockey Club and to Cheltenham race course for their respective museums. Both wanted saddles from three different periods - the early 20th century, the 1930s and the modern day.’

For a while, the firm also did a nice line in jockey’s body protectors. When Lester Piggott had his bad fall, he told the press that his body protector saved him and, as with the tack on the winning horses, demand for them rose rapidly. They have since become compulsory although new EU regulations and the use of stronger synthetic materials has persuaded the firm to withdraw from that particular sector. It was nevertheless approached by Arsenal Football Club to adapt one for goalkeeper, David Seaman, who had broken some ribs in training and was returning in time for the ’98 World Cup. And a fair amount of adaptation was necessary because Seaman with a 44” chest is slightly larger than Lester Piggott. But he actually played in it a couple of times.

This might all sound a bit of a far cry from King Charles and his times but it is really only a natural development of a sport which found perfect conditions and built upon them. And built upon them, it certainly has. Come to Newmarket, a modest enough town at first glance, and it doesn’t take long to sense the personal and corporate wealth which oozes from every square yard of the immediately surrounding countryside.

Manicured hedges, tree belts, endless estate walls and large gates guard the paddocks of the thoroughbred studs. On the Downs every morning, strings of prime horse flesh collectively worth many millions go through their paces, being urged to make the grade, their riders perhaps revelling in the downland gallops that King Charles did, assuming that Nell Gwyn let him out of the Palace House or even her own house across Palace Street that early.

Charles didn’t use a Gibson saddle but his royal successors do and it is that sort of detail which helps bind a place together. Newmarket is more than a horse racing town; it is a matrix of tradition and Gibsons with its royal patronage seems to have woven itself into that tradition.

Contact www.gibson-saddlers.com Tel 01638 662330