Sledmere House is a Grade I listed Georgian country house, containing Chippendale, Sheraton and French furnishings and many fine pictures, set within a park designed by Capability Brown. It is the ancestral home of the Sykes family and is located in the village of Sledmere, between Driffield and Malton, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The present house was begun in 1751, extended in the 1790s, and rebuilt after a fire in 1911. It was once the home of Colonel Sir Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet, noted English traveller and diplomatic advisor, and is now the home of Sir Tatton Sykes, 8th Baronet.
The house is built in Nottinghamshire ashlar on three storeys to an H-shaped plan. [1]
William Sykes (1500–1577) migrated from Cumberland to the West Riding of Yorkshire, where he and his son became wealthy cloth traders. Daniel Sykes (b.1632) was the first member of the family to begin trading in Hull and made a fortune from shipping and finance. Richard Sykes (1678–1726) concentrated on the flourishing Baltic trade in pig iron and the wealth of the family was built on this in the first half of the eighteenth century. His son Sir Richard Sykes (1706–1761) married Mary Kirkby, sister of Mark Kirby, and heiress to the Sledmere estate. [2]
In 1751, Sir Richard Sykes demolished the previous Manor House at Sledmere, which had existed since medieval times, and built a new mansion. He also planted some 20,000 trees on the Wolds about his new home. He left no male heir however and on his death the estate passed to his brother Mark Sykes (1711–1783). Sir Mark's son, Sir Christopher Sykes, 2nd Baronet (1749–1801), MP for Beverley, greatly expanded the estate. He and his wife bought and enclosed huge areas of land for cultivation, built two new wings to the house, and landscaped the grounds, planting 2,500 acres (10 km2) of trees. The entire village of Sledmere was moved. Sir Christopher left a vast estate of nearly 30,000 acres (120 km2) and a large mansion set in its own 200 acres (0.8 km2) of parkland, which survives in the family to the present day. Sir Christopher also employed Joseph Rose, the most celebrated plasterer of his day, to decorate Sledmere. The result has been called among the finest plaster-work in England.
A catastrophic fire in 1911 left the building a shell and destroyed the Adam-style 1790s interiors. It is said that Sir Tatton Sykes, 5th Baronet, was too busy eating one of the milk puddings - to which he was addicted - to pay much attention, but villagers and estate workers loyally rescued pictures, statues and furniture, china and carpets, and even doors and banisters, including the house's 1780 copy of the Apollo Belvedere . The roof fell in a few moments later. The original designs for the interiors had survived however, and the house was then restored. Sir Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet, inherited the estate after his father.
Nowadays, land tied to this manor is used as the festival site for Tribfest, a music festival featuring tribute bands of many famous artists from around the world, alive or dead. This was started in 2007 and has been hosted at the fields surrounding Sledmere House every year since then. The year of 2020 happens to be an exception, where that year's festival was called off due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Long Library at Sledmere, superbly restored, is one of the most beautiful rooms in England. The Drawing Room and Music Room were decorated by Joseph Rose. The Music Room contains a fine organ case designed by Samuel Green for the original house in 1751. However, there is nothing behind the facade pipes and the organ is unplayable. The Turkish Room was designed for Sir Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet, by an Armenian artist, David Ohannessian, inspired by one of the sultan's apartments in the Yeni Mosque in Istanbul. The tiles were made in Kutahya, Anatolia in 1913 in Ohannessian's workshop, the Société Ottomane de Faïence. The attached Roman Catholic chapel has a fine ceiling painted by Thomas Errington. It depicts the four winged creatures of the Evangelist in the Chancel and in the Nave, a variety of birds including a mute swan, grey heron, barn swallow and northern lapwing.
Sledmere House is set within a park of 960 acres (3.9 km2) designed in 1777 by Capability Brown and executed by Sir Christopher Sykes, 2nd Baronet. The plan still survives in the house. Its gardens include a paved sculpture court (1911), an 18th-century walled rose garden and a recently laid out knot garden.
Sledmere Monument is a 120 feet (37 m) stone monument along the B1252 road on Garton Hill, built in memory of Sir Tatton Sykes, 4th Baronet, by his friends and neighbours in 1865. [3]
Longleat is a stately home about 4 miles (7 km) west of Warminster in Wiltshire, England. A leading and early example of the Elizabethan prodigy house, it is a Grade I listed building and the seat of the Marquesses of Bath.
Wormleybury is an 18th-century house surrounded by a landscaped park of 57 ha near Wormley in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, England, a few miles north of Greater London. The house was rebuilt in the 1770s from an earlier house built in 1734. The house is a Grade I listed building. The garden is well known for its historic rare plant collection. There is a crescent shaped lake in the grounds, bordered by woods on three sides.
Garton on the Wolds is a village and a civil parish on the Yorkshire Wolds in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is situated approximately 3 miles (5 km) north-west of Driffield town centre and lies on the A166 road.
Sledmere is a village in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, about 7 miles (11 km) north-west of Driffield on the B1253 road.
The Sykes family of Sledmere own Sledmere House in Yorkshire, England.
The Sykes Churches Trail is a tour of East Yorkshire churches which were built, rebuilt or restored by the Sykes family of Sledmere House in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The tour was devised by the East Yorkshire Historic Churches Group and is divided into a southern circuit and a planned northern circuit.
There have been four baronetcies created for persons with the surname Sykes, two in the Baronetage of Great Britain and two in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. Three of the creations are extant as of 2008.
Sir Tatton Sykes, 5th Baronet was an English landowner, racehorse breeder, church-builder and eccentric.
Colonel Sir Tatton Benvenuto Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet was an English traveller, Conservative Party politician, and diplomatic advisor, particularly with regard to the Middle East at the time of the First World War.
Sir Christopher Sykes, 2nd Baronet was an English Tory politician and a Member of Parliament (MP) for Beverley from 1784 to 1790.
Sir Mark Sykes, 1st Baronet was a priest in the Church of England, Rector of Roos in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Sykes was created a baronet in 1783, shortly before his death; the baronetcy was originally designed for his son Christopher, who insisted it be conferred upon his father.
Rode Hall, a Georgian country house, is the seat of the Wilbraham family, members of the landed gentry in the parish of Odd Rode, Cheshire, England. The estate, with the original timber-framed manor house, was purchased by the Wilbrahams from the ancient Rode family in 1669. The medieval manor house was replaced between 1700 and 1708 by a brick-built seven-bay building; a second building, with five bays, was built in 1752; the two buildings being joined in 1800 to form the present Rode Hall.
Wilbraham Egerton was a British landowner and Member of Parliament from the Egerton family.
Sir Mark Masterman-Sykes, 3rd Baronet, born Mark Sykes, was an English landowner and politician, known as a book-collector.
Sir Tatton Sykes, 4th Baronet (1772–1863) was an English landowner and stock breeder, known as a patron of horse racing.
The Wagoners' Memorial is a war memorial in Sledmere, in the East Riding of Yorkshire in England. The unusual squat columnar memorial was designed by Sir Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet and built in 1919–20. It became a Grade II listed building in 1966, upgraded to Grade I in February 2016. The memorial stands near the Eleanor Cross, Sledmere, a copy of the Eleanor Cross from Hardingstone, which was built as a village cross in the 1890s and converted by Sykes into a war memorial for the men from his estate.
A replica Eleanor Cross was erected in Sledmere, East Riding of Yorkshire, in 1896–98. The tall stone structure was constructed by the Sykes family of Sledmere. Engraved monumental brasses were added after the First World War, converting the cross into a war memorial.
The Church of St Michael and all Angels, Garton on the Wolds, in the East Riding of Yorkshire is a church of medieval origins that was built c.1132 for the prior of Kirkham Abbey. Long connected to the Sykes family of Sledmere, Sir Tatton Sykes, 4th Baronet engaged John Loughborough Pearson to undertake a major reconstruction of the building in 1856–1857. Sykes son, the fifth baronet, employed George Edmund Street to design a series of murals for interior decoration, depicting a range of bible stories. The murals, "dirty and decaying" when Nikolaus Pevsner recorded the church in his 1972 East Yorkshire volume for the Buildings of England series, were restored in 1985–1991 in Pevsner's memory by the Pevsner Memorial Trust.
St John of Beverley Church is a Roman Catholic parish church in Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was built from 1897 to 1898 in the Gothic revival style. It is located on the corner of York Street and the North Bar in the centre of the town. It is a Grade II listed building.
Christopher Simon Sykes is an English writer and photographer. He was born into the northern English landed gentry Sykes family of Sledmere, the third son of Sir Richard Tatton-Sykes, 7th Baronet of Sledmere. In addition to authoring fourteen books, his work has appeared in many magazines. He has also written and presented Upper Crust, a six-part television series on country house cookery for BBC Two. He is married, and has two children by his first wife.