Читать книгу The Big House: The Story of a Country House and its Family - Christopher Sykes Simon - Страница 10

In February, 1783, the month in which the American War of Independence finally drew to a close, Christopher received a letter from his brother-in-law, William. ‘My Sister mentioned in her last’,’ he wrote, ‘that you were looking for a House, I hope you have heard of one by this time that will be comfortable for you at the present, I can’t help wishing very much that the Doctor wou’d give up Sledmere to you, but I conclude that is out of the question.’¹ If only for one reason, this was true: Parson was now an old man in his seventies and suffered from poor health. He had seen little of his son in the previous few years, who, as a result of the war, had taken up a commission as a Captain in Colonel Henry Maister’s Regiment, the East Yorkshire Militia, though while away from home, Christopher had been kept informed as to his father’s condition from regular letters sent to him by the Sledmere butler, John Hopper. Parson suffered constantly from pains in his chest, regular spasms and dreadful gout. ‘He is very Low Spirited and Eats very little,’² Hopper wrote in April, 1782, though there were the occasional good days. ‘I have the pleasure to acquaint you,’ wrote Hopper on 15 August, ‘that your Father got out an Airing last Saturday and has continued it every day since, he was at Church on Sunday.’ In a memoir written by my grandfather, he recalled meeting, when he was a child, an old lady who remembered seeing Parson at church, ‘a little old man with a powdered wig carried into Sledmere Church on his footman’s back’.³

Parson did not recover from his illness, and his death the following year solved Christopher’s housing problem. He survived long enough, however, to be the beneficiary of a great honour bestowed upon him by the King. Writing to Christopher early in February, 1783, Richard Beaumont, his friend and fellow plantsman, told him that he had heard ‘that a Baronet will shortly be created in the East Riding, so saith a Friend connected with the Rulers of the Nation’.⁴ The Baronetcy to which he referred was to be offered to Christopher as a reward for his contribution to the reclamation of the Wolds. The high esteem in which he held his father is evident from the fact that he chose to turn down the title, insisting that it was conferred upon Parson instead. On 25 February, 1783, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the Rt Hon. Thomas Townshend, signed a patent on behalf of King George III: ‘Our will & pleasure is that you prepare a Bill for our Royal Signature to pass our Great Seal containing the Grant of the Dignity of a Baronet of this our Kingdom of Great Britain unto our trusty and well beloved Mark Sykes, Doctor in Divinity, of Sledmire in our County of York.’⁵ So Parson became the Revd Sir Mark Sykes, 1st Baronet of Sledmere.

Amongst the hundreds of letters of congratulation that came pouring in for both the new Baronet and his son was one from Uncle Joseph, who lamented that ‘his poor state of Health will afford him so little enjoyment of this or of almost any earthly Comfort’.⁶ They were prophetic words. On 9 September Christopher recorded in his diary, ‘My father taken ill’, and the following Sunday, 14 September, ‘My Dear Father died at 4½ this morning. I got to Sledmere at 8½ not knowing of his illness till the night time at Hull Bank.’ He was buried on 19 September. ‘The Remains of my Dear Father,’ noted Christopher, ‘was taken from Sledmere at 8½ o’clock and was buried at Roos at 6 o’clock in the evening.’⁷ His coffin was attended only by his servants, a stipulation he had made in his will. ‘The very painful & lingering life which My Uncle led,’ wrote Parson’s nephew, Nicholas, to Christopher, ‘may make his death be looked upon as a happy release by all his Friends.’⁸

By the end of 1783, Christopher, Bessy and the five children had moved into the big house, unfortunately for them in the middle of an exceptionally cold winter. In an age when most of us live in over-heated houses, it is easy to forget how uncomfortable it must have been to live in a large draughty house in periods of harsh and freezing weather. It was still a number of years before the advent of any kind of central heating, and the inhabitants had to rely on individual fires as their only source of warmth. ‘I hope you all keep well & have plenty of Coals,’ wrote Henry Maister to Christopher in January, 1784, ‘for around a good fire is the only comfortable place’,⁹ though the truth is that most fireplaces usually produced more smoke than heat, and the only guaranteed way to keep warm was to wear more clothes. On 3 January, Christopher recorded ‘a heavy storm of snow’ in his diary, and throughout January and February there are regular entries for ‘deep snow’ and sometimes ‘extremely deep snow’. Things finally began to improve on 22 February, when Christopher was able to write ‘began this day to thaw’.¹⁰

No doubt inspired by the Arctic conditions they had been experiencing, Christopher also set about a new piece of building work at Sledmere, the creation of an ice-house. These buildings, which were de rigueur in most big houses of the day, were an advanced version of a ‘snow-well’ built for the Duke of York at St James’s Palace in 1666. While that had been little more than a pit dug into the ground and thatched with straw, the new models were often architect-designed and vaulted in brick or stone.¹¹ They were situated close to the nearest large stretch of water – in the case of Sledmere, it would have been the Mere – so that during the winter the ice could be cut and placed in the ice-house, carefully insulated between layers of straw, for use the following summer, when it would have been used primarily for the refrigeration of food as well as for the occasional iced dessert. The design for the Sledmere ice-house came in the form of a working drawing, showing a detailed and carefully labelled section, sent to Christopher in February, 1784 by John Carr, the architect of Castle Farm. It was dug out in July and a sum of 12s. 6d. was entered in the house accounts the following January for ‘filling Ice-House’.

Seventeen eighty-four may well have been a momentous year for Christopher and his family, their feet firmly perched upon the ladder of social ascendancy, but so it was for the outside world too. There was change in the air. The disastrous War of American Independence was over, and the ministry of the man who had presided over it, Lord North, had disintegrated. A new group of radical thinkers was beginning to influence politics, men like Joseph Priestley, Richard Price, Erasmus Darwin and Benjamin Franklin, who believed in the reformation of Parliament and in John Dunning’s famous motion ‘that the power of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished’. They had found a voice in the short-lived Parliament of Lord Rockingham’s Whig Party and had achieved a number of reforms before his sudden death in July, 1782, including the reorganisation and reduction of the Royal household, the disenfranchisement of revenue officers, and the debarring of government contractors from sitting as MPs.

The short reign of Rockingham’s successor, Lord Shelburne, and the speedy collapse of the ministry which followed – an ill-judged coalition of two implacable enemies, the unpopular Lord North and the Whig, Charles James Fox – allowed King George III to invite a rising young star, William Pitt, to form a Government. Pitt, the second son of the Earl of Chatham, himself Prime Minister over a period of twelve years, made his maiden speech at the age of twenty-one, served in Lord Shelburne’s Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer aged twenty-three, and was only twenty-four when he became First Minister. Though this might seem an extraordinary feat to most people, it would not have surprised his family, whose nicknames for him – ‘William the Great’, when he was a small child, and ‘the Young Senator’, ‘the Orator’ and ‘the Philosopher’ when he was in his teens – suggest that they had a strong hunch he would go far.¹² When aged only seven, his mother had written to her husband, ‘of William, I said nothing, but that was because he cannot be extraordinary for him’.¹³

Pitt was in the right place at the right time when oratory was becoming more and more a feature of debate. His maiden speech, made on 26 February, 1781, caused the assembled members to prick up their ears, especially since it was made off the cuff as a result of an unexpected call by a number of the opposition, eager to test out the so-called brilliance of Chatham’s son. They were not disappointed. ‘It impressed … from the judgment, the diction and the solemnity that pervaded and characterised it,’ wrote Nathaniel Wraxall, who was present. ‘The statesman, not the student, or the advocate, or the candidate for popular applause, characterised it … All men beheld in him at once a future Minister, and the members of the Opposition, overjoyed at such an accession of strength, vied with each other in their encomiums as well as in their predictions of his certain political elevation.’¹⁴ Indeed Edmund Burke was so overcome with admiration that he is reported as having said ‘he is not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block itself’.¹⁵

It was not long before Pitt had the ears of the House whenever he spoke, an honour rarely granted to new young members, and his name soon began to be known to a wider public beyond the benches of the Commons. As early as February, 1783, when he was still only twenty-three, he was the choice of a number of astute politicians to succeed Shelburne, who had resigned after two Government defeats. ‘There is scarcely any other Political Character of consideration in the Country,’ wrote Henry Dundas, ‘to whom many people from Habits, from Connections, from former Professions, from Rivalships and from Antipathies will not have objections. But he is perfectly new ground …’¹⁶ He actually was sent for by the King, but turned down the offer, on the grounds that if he was to come to power it was to be on his own terms. It was a brave and shrewd decision, for when the King asked him a second time the following December and he accepted, he was in an unassailable position. The news was received in the House of Commons with a shout of laughter. It was, after all,

A sight to make surrounding nations stare; A Kingdom trusted to a school-boy’s care.¹⁷

Any ambitious young man of position would have been swept up in the excitement of the moment, and in the general election of March, 1784 that put Pitt into office, a notorious affair that had gone on for forty days – ‘forty days’ poll, forty days’ riot and forty days’ confusion’ as Pitt himself put it¹⁸ – Christopher stood as MP for Beverley. His election was by no means a foregone conclusion since the rival candidate, Sir James Pennyman, had an enthusiastic following. ‘Sir James came yesterday’ wrote John Hopper, ‘… they all cry Sir James for ever as usual, and the Bells Ringing with Every Demonstration of Joy at seeing him’.¹⁹ It is a measure of Christopher’s own popularity that he was returned with a majority of thirty-three, inspiring a local poet, John Bayley of Middleton, to come up with a suitably unctuous set of lines:

Whilst through the Streets loud Acclamations rung,

And Sykes’s Praises dwelt on every Tongue,

‘Twas you whose Merits influenced each Voice,

Unanimous to make so wise a choice.²⁰

‘I … heartily congratulate you on your Success,’ wrote Henry Maister, ‘ ’tho I lament the furor of the times which call’d you forth, & only hope you may have no cause to regret the necessity of attending the House which I am sure will not agree with your Constitution, if the Hours in future are too as late as heretofore.’²¹ He was sworn in on 20 May, and in the early summer he was summoned to Downing Street – ‘14 at table’ he noted in his diary – where Pitt expressed his gratitude both to him and to his fellow MP, William Wilberforce, for the success of the important Yorkshire vote. Ironically it was the defeated Fox who had said in the past ‘Yorkshire and Middlesex between them make up all England.’²²

While Christopher voted, there were the first stirrings at Sledmere of a move to improve the old house. On 29 June, 1784, ‘Lady S. laid foundation stone of offices in Court Yard,’²³ noted Christopher in his diary. The work in question was the enlargement and modernisation of the probably rather cramped domestic offices at the north side of the house. The work was especially important as, according to a letter written in September, 1784 by a Miss JC to her sister Nancy, Mrs Marriott, Christopher and Bessy were already entertaining. She attended a small family party, consisting of the Sykeses and their five children, Mr and Mrs Egerton, Bessy’s brother and sister-in-law, and Richard Beaumont, Christopher’s West Yorkshire neighbour, whom she described as a ‘pretty little upright Man of Brazen Nose with a great deal of Linnen about his Neck … a strange being indeed.’ ‘I thought to captivate him,’ she added, ‘but he does not suit my taste.’

JC stayed the better part of a fortnight, and her letter gives a hint of what the atmosphere of the old house was like. ‘ ’Tis now a very good one of its Age,’ she wrote, ‘& reminds me of the Highgate House below stairs – here’s plenty of Books, Pictures good & Antiques, which keep one in constant amusement, besides Organ, Harpsichord, etc. etc.; which strange to tell I’ve exercised my small skill upon, before all the Party every day.’ Though she said she had been ‘taught to dread these Wolds’, she found herself ‘highly delighted & well may; nothing can be finer than the pure air here, only eighteen miles from Bridlington, the beautiful hill & dale of the country makes charming rides etc. Sir C has form’d & is forming great designs in the planting way which will beautify it prodigiously.’ She also confirmed that ‘the house is to be transformed some time’. Of her hosts she wrote, ‘Sir C & Ly Sykes are both extremely obliging, indeed I don’t know in what Family so nearly strangers to me, I cd. have been so agreeably placed for a visit … & not tire of it I assure you. Lady Sykes is very kind yet you must not expect any great polish in her, a resident in the country always, and without Education suitable to her great Fortune but she’ll improve in Londres.’²⁴ She had, she added, ‘very weak nerves’, and ‘dreads being presented at Court, w’ch you can pity her for: but the family must be elevated’.²⁵

Now that her husband was in politics, presentation at Court was something that Bessy could not avoid, since the wife of an MP could not go out in Society or attend any Court functions unless she had been presented and Christopher wanted to be seen. He bought himself a smart London house, paying £3,700, the equivalent today of £185,000, for 9 Weymouth St, just south of Regent’s Park and his diary for 1785 proudly opens with the words ‘Sir Chris Sykes Bart. MP Weymouth St.’ In accordance with his new status, he also bought himself a smart new coach, and had his coat of arms emblazoned on the doors. On 16 February, this gleaming new vehicle took the proud new member for Beverley and his beautiful wife to St James’s Palace for the ceremony she so dreaded.

Any woman of a nervous disposition could be forgiven for feeling anxious about the approaching ritual, in spite of the fact that she would have been preparing for it for weeks. ‘You would never believe,’ wrote Fanny Burney, Assistant Keeper of the Wardrobe to Queen Charlotte, to her sister-in-law, ‘the many things to be studied for appearing with a proper propriety before crowned heads.’ She then gave a barely ironic list of ‘directions for coughing, sneezing, or moving, before the King and Queen’, none of which were permitted, finishing with the observation that ‘if, by chance, a black pin runs into your head, you must not take it out … If, however, the agony is very great, you may, privately, bite the inside of your cheek, or of your lips, for a little relief; taking care to do it so cautiously as to make no apparent dent outwardly.’²⁶

There would have been endless fittings for Bessy’s presentation gown, which was hoop-skirted and elaborate and had to be worn with a train, as well as many expeditions out to buy the accessories required to wear with it, such as slippers, a fan, ostrich feathers and jewellery. Then she was forced to endure hours of deportment training so that she could approach the Sovereign elegantly, curtsy in a single flowing movement, without losing her balance or tripping on her gown, and then – the most nerve-racking part of the whole business – walk backwards out of the room, gathering up her train as she went, striving her utmost not to fall over it. Such practice was often carried out using a tablecloth as a simulated train. Bessy’s presentation went without a hitch, and after it she patiently remained in London for three months while Christopher attended Parliament.

He soon had his first opportunity to prove his loyalty to the Prime Minister. Ever since he had first entered Parliament in 1781 Pitt had been a passionate advocate of parliamentary reform, believing that it was vitally necessary for the preservation of liberty. Amongst plans he had proposed were the checking of bribery at elections, the disenfranchising of corrupt constituencies, and the shortening of the duration of Parliament. On 18 April, 1785, he proposed a Bill that would extinguish thirty-six rotten boroughs and transfer the seventy-two seats therein to the larger counties and to London and Westminster. The House was full, with 450 members present, of which 422 voted in the division. Christopher and his fellow Yorkshiremen, the gentlemen and freeholders of a great county, were a powerful lobby and voted to a man with the Prime Minister, but he was defeated by 248 votes to 174. Memories were short. The movement for reform had been born in a time of crisis, now over, and with a recovery in trade and a resurgence of confidence, the issue was no longer a live one. Pitt’s success in other areas had virtually killed it off and he did not try again. Perhaps Christopher became dejected by Pitt’s unwillingness to pursue further the subject of parliamentary reform, but in the six years he represented Beverley he never once spoke in the House. More likely is the possibility that his heart was never really in politics at all, being firmly ensconced at Sledmere.

On 30 May 1785, the day he and Bessy returned to Yorkshire after his first vote in the House, Christopher was one week into his thirty-sixth year, and a very rich man. His landed income alone for that year was the equivalent of over £300,000 at today’s values, and he had a corresponding sum in the bank of well over £4,000,000. It was money he was to put to good use in carrying out his ambitious plans. His first task in the preparation of the landscape he envisaged round the house was to clear away any buildings standing within its sightlines. These consisted of the few houses that remained from the old village, whose street had run in front of the house. Levelling work began in the summer of 1785 and continued over the next year. The inhabitants, who had no choice in the matter, were moved to new cottages, which had already been built elsewhere.

At the same time he was also planning a walled garden, a design for which he drew on the survey that had been commissioned by his Uncle Richard back in 1755. It was positioned to the east of that part of the old Avenue which was closest to the house, and was designed as an octagon, with tall brick walls enclosing it and hot houses against the north walls. The attention to detail in this design was typical of everything that Christopher did. Each door, for example, had its own reference identifying what type of lock it was to have and who should have a key, namely ‘Labourer, Gardiner, and Master’. His final flourish was the design of a magnificent Orangery, nine bays in length with a semi-domed roof, sited immediately to the south-east of the house, between it and the walled garden. Though the Orangery has long since been demolished and the old wood-framed hothouses have been replaced by modern ones, this garden still survives, its beautiful brick walls, pale pink when they were built using bricks from the estate’s own brickworks, now a deep rusty red. Some of them, which are of double thickness, have the remains of grates at their base, in which fires were lit to heat the walls through a series of inner pipes so that fruit could thrive on them.

With his plans for the garden and landscape well and truly in place, Christopher was at last ready to turn his attention to the house and bring to fruition the schemes he had been harbouring for many years. He was always sketching. His diaries and pocket books are full of hastily executed drawings, and undated designs and scribbles abound in the Library cupboards at Sledmere.

His passion for architecture was no secret to his friends, who were only too ready to turn to him for advice when they were planning to build. ‘I have an alteration in view for the House at Tatton,’ wrote his brother-in-law, William, in February, 1783, ‘… I shou’d be happy in your advice about my proceedings.’²⁷ For his West Yorkshire neighbour, Richard Beaumont, whose park at Whitley Beaumont had been laid out by Brown, he designed a pair of lodges to stand ‘at the end of the Avenue where those stood built by my father’. In spite of Beaumont’s enthusiasm for the project, Christopher himself appears to have been unhappy with the designs. ‘The lodges are begun,’ wrote Beaumont in September, 1783, ‘but the cellar only of one is dug. It was my intention to build one this & another next year. If the weather continues bad I shall not finish either of them this Year … Tho’ you disapprove of your Plan it is by no means disagreeable to me but if you will send me one more worthy of execution I shall be obliged to you. I intended the buildings to be exactly the size of those you sent me last Year … I have lost yr. Plan of those lodges & the gates & have only one copy of the lodges.’²⁸

Because he was not a trained architect, Christopher was never in any doubt that he would require assistance on his Sledmere project. The first person to whom he turned was the architect of Castle Farm and the ice-house, John Carr, whose pedigree when it came to building large houses was matchless. A disciple of Robert and James Adam, he had worked on, amongst others, Harewood for Edwin Lascelles, Kirby Hall for Stephen Thompson, Constable Burton for Sir Marmaduke Wyvill, Temple Newsam for Lord Irwin and Kilnwick House for John Grimston, all Yorkshire houses of great importance. He had also built the stables at Wentworth Woodhouse for the Marquess of Rockingham and at Castle Howard for the Earl of Carlisle. At some point, possibly in 1786, though it is difficult to say this with certainty since none of the designs are dated and no reference to them appears in the Account Book, he came up with a plan for the principal, south, elevation of the new house, which was to be a very traditional seven-bay front with a central pediment supported by six Ionic columns. It was not chosen by Christopher, who would have considered it far too conventional and, perhaps, not nearly grand enough.

He next approached Samuel Wyatt, an architect whose practice was based in London, but who had undertaken two important commissions in Cheshire, one for Sir Thomas Broughton at Doddington Hall and the other for Sir Thomas Stanley at Hooton Hall. Christopher had met him through his in-laws, the Egertons of Tatton, with whom Wyatt had become acquainted while working on these projects and who were regular patrons of his. The first design he showed to Christopher was certainly imposing. It consisted of a seven-bay front with a shallow dome supported on columns – two single and two pairs – over the three central bays, all above arched ground-floor windows and a semicircular ground-floor porch. It was rejected by Christopher, possibly because he found it too fussy.

True to form, and probably what he had in mind all along, Christopher now tried his own hand, producing a scheme which married elements of both the Carr and Wyatt designs, but introduced a note of striking simplicity. Keeping the scale of the elevation the same, he reduced the seven bays to three, using tripartite windows on both the first- and ground-floor levels, with the central dome replaced by a pediment supported on two pairs of columns. Considering that Christopher was an amateur competing with two of the most renowned architects of the day, he made a remarkable job of his design, and it was upon his drawings that the final scheme drawn up by Wyatt was based. Gone would be the old-fashioned house built by Uncle Richard. In its place would rise up an elegant country seat in the very latest neo-classical style, that would be a monument to the success and aspirations of its owner. The main rooms, off a central staircase hall, were to be a library, drawing room, music room and dining room on the ground floor, and a long gallery on the first floor.

Most patrons building on the scale that Christopher was doing would have employed a competent builder or carpenter as clerk of works to oversee the progress of the project. This was how many young men who went on to become successful architects began their careers. Carr, for example, had worked in this capacity for the financier, Stephen Thompson, at Kirby Hall, and Wyatt for Lord Scarsdale at Kedleston. Characteristically, Christopher, as well as acting as executive architect, decided to be his own clerk of works, which brought an added cohesion to the whole scheme. It also meant that since he was the person corresponding with the various contractors, his preserved letters go a long way to telling the story of the building of the house.

The intention was to build two new cross-wings to the north and south of the 1750 house thus creating a new and much larger building on an H plan, the whole to be encased in Nottinghamshire stone. Work began in 1787. The stone proved problematical from the start, since it had to travel a great distance, and Christopher was to conduct a running battle with Mr Marson, the foreman of the stone quarry at Clumber, Nottinghamshire, from which it was dug. The grey limestone was then shipped up the River Trent to Hull, from where it was transported up the River Hull and the Driffield Canal to Driffield. It was then carried the last eight miles of its journey by wagon, a slow and arduous trip for the heavy horses who had to drag it uphill all the way from the flatlands of Driffield to the uplands of the Wolds. Obtaining it in the right sizes and quantities, at the right price and on time, provided him with many a headache. ‘Till the last load or two,’ he wrote to Marson in July, 1788, ‘when our Vessel arrived at Stockwith, there was only one Boat load ready for her & she had to wait for another Boat returning from the Quarry. That the additional Expence has been on our side & hope you will allow me ½d. a foot the disadvantage. But seriously I believe all sides will be well satisfied if you could have one Load upon the Wharf & two Boats loaded against the Vessel gets to Stockwith, & the Captain or master can tell them within a Day or two at most when that will be.’²⁹

He wrote another letter to Marson in August, complaining bitterly of his failure to deliver materials on time. It painted a vivid picture of the situation on site a year into the building work. ‘The House wch. we are obliged to live in, having no other,’ he wrote, ‘is laid open on evry side, & will be till the facia is put on, as my New Additions entirely surround my Old House. When you Read this wch. I wish you would do every Monday Morning & consider my Situation with a large family, you must not be of Human Materials if you do not Employ all Hands to get me stone for one Vessel not to wait an Hour & two Vessels if possible. I assure you upon my Word we have not stone here for fourteen days Work without turning away the Hands we have employed all Summer & without wch. we cannot live in my House this Winter.’³⁰

The scene must have been one of chaos, with Uncle Richard’s perfect, neat house opened up on all sides, new walls rising all around it beneath a forest of scaffolding, the air filled with a cacophony of noise – the shouts and curses of the workmen, the creaking and shrieking of the ropes and pulleys, the banging of tools, the rumbling of the arriving and departing wagons, and the neighing of horses. The family were tormented by dust and Christopher wrote that they were surrounded by ‘hills of Rubish’.³¹ To cap it all, Bessy’s favourite dog, a Pomeranian bitch called Julia, was at death’s door. ‘How sorry I am to hear of her dangerous state,’ wrote her son’s tutor John Simpson to Christopher in October, ‘I am afraid Lady Sykes will take it too much to heart. I wish she wou’d never have another favourite dog. It is a Dog’s life to have to mourn for the loss of them every six or seven years.’³² The problems with the quarry dragged on. ‘I entreat you will use every effort to send us immediately some large Stones,’ Christopher wrote to Marson on 4 October, ‘which we wrote for so long ago & three Col[umns]: we cannot conclude our Work without them this Winter, and shall be all at a standstill in a Week’s Time.’³³

The outside walls appear to have been up by April, 1789, which was a crucial year in Christopher’s life, in that it was when he made his decision to give up politics, sell his London house, and devote all his time to Sledmere. This is not so surprising when one considers how much time and energy he was giving over to his great project, leaving little room in his life for the machinations of the political world. He also liked to be at the helm and could never have been happy as a small cog in a large wheel. Bessy hated the political and court life, and this too may have been a factor in his decision. He broke the news to his constituency at the beginning of June, writing to his agent, Mr Lockwood, ‘I have given up every thought of Standing again for Beverley. When I came the last Time it was done on a sudden, & I find a steady attendance at the House of Commons not consistent with my health, or consonant to my feelings & mode of Life.’³⁴

In anticipation of the completion of all the stonework by the end of the year, Christopher now embarked on the next stage of the work on the new house, which was to consider the interior decoration. While helping out a neighbour, Sir Thomas Frankland, with designs for the improvement of his house, Thirkleby Park, near Thirsk, he had been introduced to the work of Joseph Rose, one of Robert Adam’s leading decorators, whose work included the ceilings of the Gallery at Harewood, the Library at Kenwood, the stuccoes of the Hall at Syon and the ceiling of the Great Parlour at Kedleston. ‘I am building a large House,’ he wrote to Rose on 26 July, ‘& thro the Recommendation of Sir Thos. Frankland, & your General fame wish you to undertake the plaistering … I intend to finish very slowly as I wish the Work to be well done neat & Simple rather in the Old than New Stile nothing Rich or Gaudy, but suiting to plain Country Gentn.’³⁵ He asked him to come as soon as possible, and in a further letter expressed his wish that ‘all the Men you employ here will not be sent from London as I have a particular pleasure in employing Persons in my Neighbourhood when it can be done consistently with the Work being well executed, & they are usually well acquainted with the Nature of the Materials’.³⁶

Sir Thomas Frankland could not have made a better recommendation than Rose whose ideas turned out to be exactly what Christopher had been looking for. He was thrilled with the first set of drawings. ‘I perfectly agree with you in your Ideas of the Stile in wch. my House ought to be finished,’ he wrote excitedly at the beginning of October, ‘& I would have but few Ornamts. But what decorations are introduced I would have them singular, bold and Striking & only where propriety & good Taste required them.’ The delivery from London of an order of fixtures and fittings the following week might have suggested that work was now progressing at a pace. ‘On Saturday Night the Doors arrived here,’ Christopher confirmed to John Andrew of Aire Street on 12 October, ‘and when we opened them this Day they had got some little wet but will be no worse, I think them very handsome Doors.’ Not so. There was, inevitably, a sting in the tail; ‘the Hinges also come, but you have forgot to send the Screws’.³⁷

Errors such as this, small though they may have been, were an irritation to Christopher and his family who had been steadily retreating into more and more cramped conditions, virtually confined to the top floor of the old house. Here they survived until 1 February, 1790, when, at five in the morning, they set out for London. They were to spend as much of the year as possible in town, sheltering from the dust and the discomfort, and taking advantage of the fact that the house in Weymouth Street still remained unsold.

When the family finally returned to Sledmere, in the winter of 1790, they found the situation there greatly improved, with most of the exterior completed. This allowed Christopher to turn his attention to thoughts of the interiors, beginning with what was to be the most important room in the house, the Gallery, which had made its initial appearance on the design submitted by Samuel Wyatt in 1787. Though no drawings for it have survived, it is likely that Wyatt must have executed some, and it was these, or adaptations of them by Christopher, that Rose used as the basis for his ideas. ‘Both your last letters have much pleased me,’ he wrote on 2 April, 1791 ‘your first in giving me an account of the Gallery and saying that you was much pleased with it – I think it will be one of the finest rooms in the Kingdom.’³⁸ He did not exaggerate, for to this day the room has few rivals in grandeur, even in houses twice the size. Two storeys high and running the entire length of the south front of the house, a distance of 120 feet, it is divided into three great cross-vaulted compartments, inspired by such Roman buildings as the Baths of Diocletian and Caracalla, soaring upwards into the roof space. Though Wyatt undoubtedly intended it to be a room for the display of pictures, for congregation and for occasional use as a ballroom and it was always referred to by Rose as ‘the Gallery’, at some point the idea took hold in Christopher’s mind that it should become a Library.

The rooms which followed, in particular the Music Room and the Drawing Room, suggest that, about this time, Christopher appears to have modified the notion of himself as the ‘plain country gentleman’ who wanted things done ‘neat & simple’, a description which could in no way be applied to the Drawing Room, an exquisite creation of which Rose was especially proud. ‘I must own that I think it the best design I ever made,’³⁹ he wrote on 31 May, 1792, and with its intricately designed ceiling, containing motifs depicting Greek religious rites, with complex patterns coloured in blues, terracotta and light pinks, and its gilded highlights, the room showed Rose in his most ornamental mood. He was nervous, however, that Christopher would find it too elaborate. ‘I am afraid you will send it back again,’ he continued gingerly, ‘you will tell me that it is far too fine for your house, and too expensive and yet when I think of your Gallery, the proportion will bear me out.’ He excused the finery by saying that ‘the design is made for Lady Sykes room.’⁴⁰

‘I never saw any place so much improved as Sledmere,’ wrote Christopher’s nephew, William Tatton, to his father, during a ten-day stay in May, 1792. ‘I think the Gallery as fine a room as I ever saw. They have not yet finished the Sealing and I suppose it will be nearly two years before they will be able to make any more of that room.’⁴¹ A year later, apart from the floor of the Gallery, all the major building work was complete, and Rose’s time was taken up with painting and decorating. At the end of May, Rose, whose relationship with his client had grown to a stage where he was also acting as his agent in London, had sent Christopher ‘a great number of patterns of papers … many of them very pretty’ from shops in Swallow Street and Ludgate Hill.⁴² This was the first mention of wallpaper in their correspondence and he returned to the subject now. ‘Mrs Rose has been about your papers to Ludgate Hill and chosen the borders … if the papers are to be glaz’d upon an average they will cost three halfpence more.’⁴³

Though John Houghton, a contemporary of Evelyn and Pepys, had written as early as 1699 that ‘a great deal of Paper is nowadays so printed to be pasted upon walls to serve instead of Hangings’,⁴⁴ wallpaper did not truly become fashionable till the 1730s when improvements in manufacturing brought down the price. ‘I am told there is a new sort of Paper now,’ a neighbour of Christopher’s, Nathaniel Maister, had written to his friend, Thomas Grimston, in 1764, ‘made for hanging rooms with, which is very handsome, indeed from the price it ought to be so, for I think it is 2s. 6d. a yard. Have you seen any of it?’ Christopher’s paper was ready to be shipped on 4 September. ‘I have not been so fortunate as to see any room fitted up with the furniture and the paper having a border of the same pattern,’ wrote Rose. ‘I should imagine it would look very pretty … if you please I will make further inquiries about it.’⁴⁵ He had soon found a Mr Sagar, a former upholsterer turned wallpaper-hanger, to ‘come over to Sledmere & hang as many Rooms as are wanted to be hung at 7d. a Sheet, borders included, everything to be found for him to hang the Rooms with.’⁴⁶

Rose also took it upon himself to furnish Christopher with everything he needed for his new home. It was a job he was only too happy to do, particularly since he knew his employer to be a prompt payer. ‘I am exceedingly obliged to you for your offer of money,’ he wrote in June, 1793, ‘but I am not in want of any at present, and I am fully persuaded I never should be, if all my employers paid as you do: or only one half of them.’ Rose organised the ironwork for the staircase, mirrors for all the rooms and supervised numerous other orders, such as a ‘lamp for the Drawing Room ceiling’, ‘handles for the Vazes in the Hall’, the ‘Altar and Grate’ for the hall fireplace, and ‘sham stoves’ to heat the outer hall. Something else arrived for the house in the middle of August, something for which the Sykeses had waited seven years and which was one of the most important purchases Christopher ever made. ‘By Sir Christopher Sykes’s directions,’ noted William Saunders of Cavendish Square, London, on 2 August, ‘I pack’d up in a packing case upwards of nine feet long, a picture, & with it a small Box – sent them to the White Horse, Cripplegate, directed to you – the Waggon left London Yesterday (Thursday) Morning, by that you will know when to expect them.’⁴⁷ The small box contained a white satin dress, the packing case ‘a large whole length picture’. It was to turn out to be one of the greatest eighteenth-century portraits ever painted.

‘Painted by Mr Romney,’ stated the account, dated 16 May, 1793, ‘a large whole length picture of Sir Christopher and Lady Sykes. £168.’⁴⁸ The picture, so carefully packed up by the framer, William Saunders, was a full-length portrait of Christopher and Bessy by George Romney that had been started in 1786. This painting, which today is regarded as being one of Romney’s finest works, was commissioned by Christopher when he first became an MP, as an expression of his status. Twelve sittings for this painting were recorded in 1786 and the picture was then left unfinished in Romney’s studio for several years. The fact that it took so long to complete meant that by the time it was delivered it had evolved into something much more than just a straightforward portrait of a country gentleman.

Here stands an elegant slim young man, wearing a scarlet coat and black breeches. With a long, straight nose and high forehead, he is tall and brimming with confidence. In his right hand he holds a pair of spectacles, in his left a plan of some kind, both of which suggest the seriousness that becomes a man of his station. If he were on his own, one might describe him as haughty, but he is saved from this by the charming and softening nature of his beautiful red-haired wife, Bessy. Wearing a long white silk dress, with a string of pearls flung almost casually across her right shoulder, she leads him out of some Ionic portico into a landscape which reflects his accomplishments; those in architecture represented by a distant ‘eyecatcher’, probably Life Hill Farm; in agriculture by the acres of plantations and enclosed fields which stretch out before him. Her hair, strung with pearls, catches the wind and at her feet a brown and white spaniel stands adoringly. She is gazing at her husband with a look of both love and admiration. Often called The Evening Walk – in comparison to Gainsborough’s famous painting of Mr and Mrs William Hallett, The Morning Walk – it is a portrait of the greatest charm.

More important, however, is the fact that it represents Sir Christopher Sykes as he saw himself, a man who was at the very pinnacle of his achievements, who had risen from the ranks of the merchant class to become the epitome of the aristocratic landowner. In the general scheme of things it could not possibly have come at a more appropriate time. His land holdings were approaching their peak. He bought eight estates in the years 1792 and 1793, spending on them in excess of £52,000, the largest sum he had ever spent in such a short period. This brought the rental income he received annually from his estates up to £12,004. 8s. ¾d., which was a remarkable increase on the £1,960. 11s. 6d. he had started with in 1771.

The spaniel which Romney painted standing at the feet of its owners is a sporting dog, lending the suggestion, not incorrectly, that the subject was a lover of field sports. Christopher considered ‘the pleasures of the chase’ to be ‘really useful and beneficial to Society’. He laid out his reasons for this in a letter to his close friend Thomas Grimston. ‘They give opportunities of wearing off Shinesses, dispelling temporary differences, forming new friendships and cementing old, and draw the Gentlemen of the Country into one closer bond of Society.’⁴⁹ His account book shows that he was a regular subscriber to a number of hunts throughout his life, while his diaries record several occasions when he rode out with hounds, his last outing having been in November, 1785, when he ‘hunted with Sir J Legard’.⁵⁰

In spite of this, it was well known in the neighbourhood that hunting was not allowed at Sledmere. The reason for this was that he did not want his young plantations trampled to pieces. His neighbours were happy to respect his wishes. ‘You have objections, which no one has a right to controvert or even discuss,’ Lord Carlisle had written to him in October, 1788 from his nearby seat at Castle Howard. ‘You may depend upon my hounds not approaching in quest of their game any covers from which it is your inclination to exclude them.’ This rule did not apply, however, to other parts of his estate where hounds were free to go as they pleased. ‘I thankfully receive the permission to go upon your other estates,’ wrote Carlisle, ‘with the obliging offer of making covers, & accommodations upon them.’⁵¹

The final element in the Romney portrait, represented by the ruined Temple and the distant view of Life Hill, was architecture. It was timely since the arrival of the painting signified the virtual completion of the house. Rose was critical of the picture, ‘indeed I cannot see any likeness to Lady Sykes,’ he said dismissively,⁵² and there was a long-running argument as to where to hang it. Neither Rose nor his wife wanted it to hang in the Drawing Room. ‘Mrs R says the Picture must not hang over the Chimney,’ he had told Christopher in August, 1792, ‘and she is sure that Lady Sykes will not agree to it.’⁵³ He even suggested that ‘Lady Sykes … shall scold when she sees you.’⁵⁴ In the end it was hung in the Dining Room, where it still hangs to this day.

It seems that by the end of August, 1793, Christopher, although still telling people that ‘my House is far from finished’, was ready to receive a few guests outside the family. ‘How happy it would make Lady Sykes and myself,’ he wrote to the Duke of Leeds, on hearing that he was to visit Beverley, ‘if my Lady Duchess and your Grace would do us the Favor to come upon the Wolds … we have Beds sufficient to accommodate your Grace, and any Friends you may do us the Honor to bring with you.’⁵⁵ By the time they visited, in October, with the exception of the Drawing Room and the Gallery, they would have found most of the main rooms painted and papered. Christopher having spent the princely sum of £1,384. 17s. 5d. in 1792 and 1793 on furniture, there was also presumably no lack of places to sit.

There was still much work to be done on the Gallery, including the laying of the floor, but so impressed by it were all those who saw it that Christopher decided to commission a picture of it to send out to all his friends. The man he chose to do this was Thomas Malton, an architectural draughtsman and occasional scene painter who had recently published with some success A Picturesque Tour Through the Cities of London and Westminster. Malton’s finished drawing, a watercolour, which arrived early in 1795, was exquisite. It showed the room empty except for a desk, thereby considerably enhancing its size, and the feeling of space was further magnified by the use of perspective, achieved by leading the eye towards the window at the far end and out of it to the church tower. Three minute figures, one seated at the desk, the others lolling in an alcove, completed the impression of vastness. The plate read ‘The Library at Sledmere, the Seat of Sir Christopher Sykes Bart, in the East Riding of Yorkshire’, and in the bottom left-hand corner an inscription gave credit where it was most due: ‘Designed and executed by Josh. Rose in 1794.’ Two hundred black and white impressions were made from it which must have greatly stirred the imaginations of all those who received them. The architectural historian, Christopher Hussey, wrote of it in 1949, ‘architecturally designed libraries are a feature of several of Adam’s country houses, most notably Kenwood. But this one surpasses them all in majesty of conception, suggesting rather the library of a college or learned and wealthy society; indeed in the space allotted to it, in the amount of shelf room, and in the beauty of its decoration it is surely the climax of the Georgian conception of the library as the heart and soul of the country house.’⁵⁶

So the Gallery officially became the Library. The bookshelves ran down both sides from the floor to beneath the vaulting, with semicircular ones at each end on either side of the windows. Two great mirrors, designed by Wyatt, hung on the north wall while the floor was covered with a fine worsted carpet which stretched the entire length of the room and had a design which matched that of the ceiling. This was an entirely homespun affair, having been woven at a carpet factory run by Mr Christopher Bainton on one of Christopher’s estates at Wansford. Today it only exists in the Malton watercolour, since at the time of the fire it was being stored in the attics and was subsequently amongst the few contents of the house that were destroyed.

Thomas Malton also painted a watercolour of the exterior of the house, which is the only existing picture showing the grounds as they were in 1795. On the right of the picture, the landscape to the east of the house is heavily planted with large shrubs and maturing trees, and the ground slopes down to Christopher’s beautiful Orangery, with its rows of tall windows. In the middle a roughly cut lawn rises on a gentle incline right up the front door, which is reached by five steps, and where a number of people are congregating. To the left of the house a number of deer are gathered beneath a mature tree, observed by a woman and child, while in the foreground a couple are enjoying a leisurely stroll. It represents a romantic idyll, and is the first recorded view of the final realisation of a great project.

While the peaceful mood of the scene suggests the best of times, in the outside world there were clouds gathering which were soon to take Christopher away from his beloved Sledmere. Since 1793, England had been at war with France, and there had been few successes for her in the conflict. As Napoleon Bonaparte rose inexorably to power, Prime Minister Pitt and his colleagues could only look on with growing horror. One by one Britain’s allies on the Continent either made peace with or were defeated by the French, culminating with the collapse of Austria in 1797, which left England effectively fighting alone against this now all-powerful enemy. When Pitt himself made an attempt to reach a settlement with France, he was treated with the utmost contempt by the Directory, which had governed the country since the end of the Terror. They set terms that they knew would be impossible for Pitt to meet and immediately set about mobilising the combined French, Spanish and Dutch fleets to sail against Britain. Napoleon, triumphant after his success in conquering Italy, was appointed ‘Commander-in-Chief’ of the forces for the invasion of England, the Army of England.

On 22 January, 1798, Henry Dundas, Principal Secretary of State for War, sent Christopher the following letter. ‘Sir, Living in this distant part of England,’ he wrote, ‘I request you will excuse me troubling you to inform me if there is any plan to be given to the Country Gentlemen for having their Tenants and Neighbours enrolled for the use of their Waggons or their personal service either on Foot or Horseback at or near their Homes or whether anything of this kind is in Contemplation … and if not whether we … are justified in assembling those who are willing either with or without arms …’⁵⁷

Dundas had in fact anticipated exactly what Christopher had in mind, who, before he ever read this letter, had written to the Duke of Leeds telling him that ‘I have lately thought that something should be done towards being prepared for defending ourselves against the French our infernal Enemies.’ He had appealed to the Duke to ‘make the proper Application to know if arms and Ammunition will be allowed to any Body of Horse or foot appointed for Defence of our own Coast & neighbourhood only, under myself & other neighbouring gentlemen. The Officers to be answerable for the Arms when called upon. The Men and Officers requiring no Pay except for Sergeants to teach them the Exercise & Evolutions. By Arms I mean a Sabre & pair of Pistols in Holsters for the Horse & Muskets with Bayonets (perhaps if one half had pikes) for the Foot.’⁵⁸

Christopher concluded his letter to the Duke by saying he was certain that if he was allowed to pursue his scheme, ‘I have Reason to believe I shall be able to assemble a Number of Persons in this Neighbourhood.’ The result was the formation of the Yorkshire Wolds Gentlemen and Yeomanry Cavalry, which raised forty-five men as volunteers from sixteen parishes adjacent to Sledmere. On 22 February his friend Thomas Grimston from Kilnwick, who had his own troop, was writing to tell him that Sergeant Robert Wilson, one of the Sergeants in the Militia, wished ‘to refresh his Memory by overlooking now & then the Regulations laid down for ye Sword Exercise,’ and hence he had taken the liberty of ordering from the York bookseller, Mr Todd, ‘a Book of the Sword Exercise’.

Ten days later Grimston was offering him ‘ye Sabres which have been used by my Troops’, so long as he could keep back four ‘in order to be used for the Attack & defence’. ‘There will still remain fifty,’ he assured him, ‘which if you wish for you may have immediately’, though he added the proviso ‘that in case my troop shd. be embodied or be called out for any Service before I get new Swords that you will lend me the old ones in the interim’. They would cost him 19s. each; ‘Christopher’s account book shows that he spent altogether £678. 18s. 9d. on equipping his cavalry. Many of the muskets, bayonets and other arms that he acquired still decorate the walls of the Entrance Hall at Sledmere.

So seriously did Christopher take his role as Captain of the Militia that at one point he was considering equipping them with cannon. His neighbour Lord Mulgrave, unlike Christopher an experienced soldier, soon set him right about this misguided plan. ‘With respect to the advantages which you might derive, in the event of actual service before an enemy, from the addition of cannon to your corps, I entertain strong doubts,’ he wrote on 19 June, 1798. ‘Large corps of Cavalry, forming the Wing of an army or detached to a distance & obliged to maintain themselves in their Post, find great advantage from a small proportion of light artillery, well trained and under the command of skilful Artillery officers. But a small corps, acting as light troops would find themselves much embarrassed in their movements, would lose much of that most essential quality of rapidity, and would in many instances expose themselves to the sacrifice of many men, or to the loss of their guns if the Enemy should encounter them with a superior body of Cavalry.’⁵⁹

On 19 July, Christopher, who had organised his troop with the same efficiency and pride that he had set about the rebuilding of Sledmere, received his official orders from the King. ‘To Our Trusty & Wellbeloved Sir Christopher SYKES Bt. Greeting,’ they began, and followed on ‘We, reposing especial Trust and Confidence in Your Loyalty, Courage and good Conduct, do, by these Presents, constitute and appoint you to be Captain of the Yorkshire Wolds Gentlemen and Yeomanry but not to take rank in Our Army except during the Time of the said Corps being called out into actual Service.’⁶⁰ The call never came. On 1 August, 1798, Admiral Nelson and the British Navy, described by Pitt as the ‘saviours of Mankind’, successfully annihilated the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile, thereby ending Napoleon’s dreams of an invasion. The Yorkshire force was soon disbanded.

The last year of the eighteenth century saw Christopher much on the move, apparently in search of a cure for Bessy’s failing health. ‘I am truly sorry for the indisposition of Lady Sykes,’ Rose had written to Christopher in May, 1798, ‘and I hope the Machine, which I have ordered from Mr LOWNDES will be of infinite use, indeed I think it a very ingenious machine.’ The contraption he referred to was an exercise machine, and he was quick to assure his employer that he would not be recommending something that he had not tried himself. ‘After Mr LOWNDES had showed me utility of it, I got into it, and find that it will be very strong exercise.’ Mr Lowndes, he continued, ‘has promised to inform you of all the situations for the different parts of the body, it will be particularly strong if you turn the machine yourself, I have ordered the Pedometer as I think it may be of great use, as by it you may know how many miles you have supposed to go.’ He concluded by telling Christopher that ‘from the simplicity of the construction of the device I think it is impossible to be ever out of order’, though he did admit, hinting at the truly Heath Robinson nature of the machine, ‘only you may want a new string now and then’.⁶¹

Though there is no mention of the exact nature of what was wrong with her, other than that she suffered from ‘weak nerves’, there is a strong likelihood that she may have been victim to one of the many illnesses which are now known to have been caused by lead poisoning, such as disease of the kidneys, recurring headaches, lassitude, and indeed problems of the nerves, all due to the then common use of the metal in everyday things such as water pipes, earthenware, cooking pots, pewter plates and tankards, cosmetics, hair dyes and medicines. Unsurprisingly, Mr Lowndes’s apparatus did little for Bessy’s condition, and the bitter cold month of January, 1799 found her and Christopher consulting a Dr Hall in London, staying with some of the family at a house they had rented in Lisson Grove.

At first her condition appeared to be improving. ‘I am happy to say my Mother is much better,’ wrote their son Christopher to his brother Tatton, ‘and in a very fair way of Recovery.’ Though it was at a cost. ‘This man puts her to a great deal of pain,’ he continued, ‘& I have to go to him every Morn. above three miles off. In short for what she undergoes with him, she deserves her health. From his account the Complaint has been long coming on, & will be long in getting the better of it.’⁶² In February, an Irish friend, the Hon. William Skeffington, wrote to inquire after her health. ‘I have felt much for Lady Sykes during the recent severe weather,’ he told her husband, ‘I am very impatient to hear that it has not thrown her back & flatter myself your next will give a good acct. of her recovering with Dr Hall.’⁶³

June found the Sykeses in Bath, with Bessy apparently no better. ‘I was happy to find … that you had arrived safe,’ wrote George Britton to Christopher, ‘and found Lady Sykes not worse than might be expected from her late Relapse; I hope the Change of Air, Journey and Benefits of the Bath Waters will be of infinite service.’⁶⁴ By far the most popular and fashionable form of treatment of the day was ‘taking the waters’ at one of the many spa towns, such as Harrogate, Bath and Weymouth. This consisted of both drinking the mineral waters and taking prolonged baths in them. Recent studies have shown that there was indeed great benefit to be gained from doing this, particularly for those people who suffered from diseases caused by lead poisoning: full immersion of the body in water for several hours increases the excretion of urine from the body, and out with it goes a significant amount of lead. Drinking a large quantity of the waters has the same effect. They were, proclaimed an eighteenth-century postcard, ‘wonderful and most EXCELLENT agaynst all diseases of the body proceeding of a MOIST CAUSE as Rhumes, Agues, Lethargies, Apoplexies, The Scratch, Inflammation of the Fits, hectic flushes, Pockes, deafness, forgetfulness, shakings and WEAKNESS of any Member – Approved by authoritie, confirmed by Reason and daily tried by experience.’⁶⁵

While Christopher and Bessy were benefiting from their daily immersions, George Britton, who had succeeded to the post of his Steward, after the death of the faithful Robert Dunn in January, 1795, conducted a regular correspondence, keeping them informed about everything which went on at Sledmere in their absence, and answering Christopher’s endless inquiries. On 2 June it was a piece of ornithological news: ‘I have occasion to write till near 12 o’clock two nights,’ he told them, ‘at which late hours I heard the two Nightingales distinct. After opening the Window they filled my Room with Melody, their different Notes exceeded everything.’ On 9 June he described the disastrous unpacking of a new carriage: ‘Truslove went to unpack it and set it up & Mrs Rousby brought it here. Truslove informs me that it was very ill packed. The rats while on shipboard have eaten the greater part of the leather trunk behind …’ A fortnight later he gave an account of how the garden was looking. ‘The Laburnums are just showing the Flower Bud, the Apple Trees in full Blossom, so are Strawberries, the former in abundance, the White Thorn not out yet, every Hedge and Tree will be full, one may just perceive from the House a whitish cast from the tops of the single trees in the Lawn, old Ash not yet in full leaf.’ By the end of the month he was able to write ‘I am very glad to hear that Lady Sykes continues gathering strength’, adding rather wistfully ‘I wish you all had a Month of Sledmere Air.’⁶⁶

After Bath they went to Weymouth, the most fashionable of all the resorts, being the favoured haunt of the King and Queen. ‘I suppose you are now so great with Royalty & Royal Parties,’ William Skeffington teased Christopher, ‘that you could hardly enjoy the humble Society of the family’, though he added ‘I most sincerely hope Lady Sykes will receive benefit from Sea Bathing.’⁶⁷ One blessing of this particular stay was that the weather was warm, which George Britton hoped would ‘speed her Ladyship’s recovery’. In the meantime he continued his reports from home. ‘We have had three or four charming Hay days in the course of last Week which have enabled us to … get into stack in very good condition.’ ‘Currants are very plentiful,’ he wrote of the garden. ‘The servants took at the same time two fine melons and a small Pine.’ In the autumn they returned to Bath for more of the waters. ‘I’m sorry to find by your two last letters that your colds seem to hang on,’ Britton wrote to them there, adding ‘the Change of Weather will I hope soon remove them’.⁶⁸

There are continuous anxious references to Bessy’s health in Christopher’s correspondence over the next two years, and in 1801 he fell ill himself. The first indication that all was not well came in a letter sent by George Britton to Christopher while he was en route to the Hotwell Spa at Bristol, whose mineral waters had a reputation as a cure for diverse ailments such as kidney complaints, ‘hot livers’ and ‘feeble brains’.⁶⁹ ‘Your Health was particularly enquired after by all the Gentlemen at Driffield,’ he wrote on 30 August. ‘I hope you are approaching near to Bristol when you will then be relieved from Fatigue of Travel and I trust in a little time you will be gathering strength so as to bring about a speedy Recovery.’ A few days later they had still not reached their destination and Britton was writing ‘we are all sorry to find that your travel was slow and irksome’, adding ominously ‘I was very sorry to find that upon the whole you had gathered little strength.’

By 13 September the party ‘had all reached Clifton safe and met with a comfortable situation’. But all was not well. ‘I am equally sorry to find,’ Britton told Christopher, ‘that the State of your Health appears not in any shape to improve, God grant a Change for the better.’ His letter was then filled with the usual account of the day-to-day goings on at his beloved Sledmere. Richard Beaumont had sent ‘a small Box containing a Gate Sneck … the Kind is very simple and may be of use for Hand Gates, the one sent is to be let into stone but with a little Alteration may be made do for Wood’. The gardeners would ‘attend to the new planted trees in time, Cole to the new paled trees agreeable to your directions. I cannot see that the Deer or Horses have disturbed the trees in the Park since you left Sledmere.’ The hay stacks had all been ‘thatched without a Wisp of Hay damaged’, but there were ‘only five Bunches of the Raisin Grape, three of which are spoiled by Mildew occasioned by the steam or Vapour rising from the Tank in the Vinery’. There had been ‘a fine week of Harvest Weather … I have got our Clover Stubble eaten with sheep and have begun to plow the same and from the appearance of the land shall be tempted to sow the same with a hardy kind of Red Wheat.’⁷⁰

All this information was doubtless passed on to Christopher in answer to worries he had expressed over estate matters, and shows that even when he was supposedly resting at a spa, he was incapable of relaxing. Britton concluded his news as follows: ‘I think I have nothing more particular at this time to name – I remain with my ardent Wishes for your Recovery. Your obedient humble servant, Geo. Britton.’ It was the last letter he was ever to write to Christopher, who died four days later on 17 September aged fifty-two. No account exists of the manner of his death, but it is tempting to speculate that he died with Britton’s letter in his hand and Sledmere on his mind. What killed him is a mystery, though it was probably heart failure due to chronic fatigue brought on by a lifetime of overwork. ‘He has left an excellent character in every relation of life, whether public or private, and was, in every sense, an enlightened country gentleman.’ So ran his obituary in the The Gentleman’s Magazine, continuing ‘His early rising and great activity, both of body and mind, prompted the conduct of every plan of amending the state of the country, whether by drainage or inclosure, building or navigation: and his improvements extended themselves over a surface of nearly 100 miles. The Wolds of Yorkshire will be his lasting monument.’

But Sledmere itself was to be his chief monument. Eight years after his death, a Hull merchant, Theopilus Hill, making an autumn tour through Yorkshire by chaise, visited it and wrote an account of his impressions. When Hill and his friends had finished their tour of the house, they roamed the grounds, taking in all of the ‘numerous and extensive’ plantations. They were amused by ‘a Pyramidical Monument of stone, with an inscription to the memory of some favourite dogs’, and visited the Orangery, which had ‘the largest and finest fruit we ever saw’. A gardener gave them a tour of the Walled Garden.

The Gardens are about two-and-a-half acres with Hothouses etc: in the latter we found many fig trees, and were informed they produced abundant fruit, which ripened well; the family are partial to this fruit. We found some very good apple trees, which the Gardener highly extolled for bearing large fruit and in all seasons: he said he knew not where Sir Christopher had got them from, but they had now acquired the name of Sledmere Apples. We also observed against a wall, a species of shrub, which the Gardener said was between a raspberry and a bramble, and bore fruit till Christmas: we tasted some of the fruit, and found it to be of good flavour.

Hill concluded his memoir with a eulogy to the creator of this paradise.

The House has been built twenty-two years, and the Plantations were made about eighteen years ago, by the late Sir Christopher Sykes; whose improvements are a lasting honour to his memory. He changed a naked and barren tract into a fertile, woody, and cultivated region; and his successor is treading in his steps; many other useful and ornamental additions being now in contemplation.⁷¹