The Big House: The Story of a Country House and its Family

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

CHAPTER IV The Collector

On 19 February, 1784, a day on which exceptionally deep snow lay round about, Christopher noted in his diary, ‘Mr Simpson and the boys left us.’ They were heading for York by coach, and the journey proved an eventful one. ‘We set off for York, got to Weighton in ye coach with much danger and difficulty,’1 reported Simpson, though they finally reached their destination on the evening of 21 February. The Mr Simpson who took Christopher’s sons away with him was the Revd John Simpson. He had been their tutor since October, 1778 when he had been recommended for the post by the Revd William Cleaver, Christopher’s former tutor at Oxford. He was paid a salary of £120 a year and was evidently regarded as a friend by his employer, who lent him money on a regular basis and occasionally took him as a companion on trips to London. On 2 January, 1782, for example, they had both ‘supped’ with Dr Johnson, while on 4 January they ‘dined’ with Mr Brown.2 The boys were now coming up to the ages of thirteen, twelve and ten respectively and it was time for Christopher to consider the next step in their education. He decided to send Mark and Tatton to Westminster, where his Uncle Richard’s friend Henry Pelham and his brother the Duke of Newcastle, both Prime Ministers, had been pupils. The youngest boy, Christopher, was to remain under Mr Simpson.

‘I am exceedingly rejoiced you have determined to send your two Eldest Boys to Westminster,’ wrote Henry Maister in February, 1784, delighted that the boys were going to a school frequented by the sons of other Yorkshire gentry. ‘I went yesterday to Mrs CLAPHAMS, the House the HOTHAMS & HUDSONS are at, & which by all Accts. is the best in the place … she will have room for your two young Men, should you come up with them. I am sure you will like their Dame as they call her.’ He concluded his letter with an account of her terms: ‘£25 p.a. for Board and Washing, two Guineas for Fire and candle, two Guineas for Servants, eight shillings for Mending Linen and Cleaning Shoes, five Guineas Entrance Fees, two Guineas to the Masters, and an extra four Guineas a quarter for the use of a Single Bed’. In addition ‘each Young Gentleman to bring one Doz. Of Towels and one Table Spoon’.3

Mark and Tatton went up to Westminster, to board in ‘Mother’ Clapham’s house, in June, 1784. The Headmaster was Samuel Smith, a man described by one of his pupils, the dramatist George Colman, as being ‘very dull and good-natured’.4 Under his regime, the boys enjoyed a freedom that would be considered unthinkable today and the general atmosphere of the school appears to have verged upon almost constant anarchy. Bullying was rife. Frederick Reynolds, a contemporary of Colman’s, who a few years previously had attended the same house as the Sykes boys, described the treatment of new boys in his memoirs. On the very eve of his arrival, to shouts of ‘New boy! New boy!’, he was set upon by ‘a vast number of boys’ who subjected him to every manner of indignity. ‘After enduring an inundation of ink from every squirt in the room,’ he recorded, ‘till I, and my fine clothes, were of an universal blackness; after performing various aerial evolutions in my ascents from a blanket managed by some dozens pairs of hands insensible of fatigue in the perpetration of mischief; and after suffering the several torments of every remaining species of manual wit, I was at length permitted to crawl into my bed. There I lay, comforting myself with the assurance that torture had done its worst, till I gradually sobbed myself into a sound sleep.’5 Reynolds’s Welsh roommate was so tormented by bullies that he tried suicide by hanging himself from the bedpost, an attempt which failed when Reynolds returned to the room unexpectedly and cut him down. The boy’s reaction to his rescuer, when he had fully recovered, was to knock him to the ground. ‘There, take that,’ he cried with much apathy, ‘and the next time I choose to hang myself, you will know better than to prevent me.’6

There were instances of violence and rebellion against which the goings on in most of today’s inner-city schools pale in comparison. The Annual Register for 1779, for example, gave an account of the trial of ‘Messrs. Kelly, Lindsay, Carter, Hill, Durrell, and another six Westminster schoolboys … for an assault of a man in Dean’s Yard in January last, when they beat and wounded him in a most shocking manner, and after that, Kelly, with a drawn knife in his hand, said, “If you don’t kneel down and ask pardon, I will rip you up.”’7 In 1786, there was a rebellion at Westminster, led by Sir Francis Burdett. Though this may have been inspired by similar events at Eton College three years previously, when the boys had broken every window in the school, smashed up the Headmaster’s chambers and burnt chunks off the flogging block, it was ended swiftly when Headmaster Smith decided to exert his authority. He confronted Sir Francis and, when he refused to give ground, felled him with a blow from a thick stick.8 He was subsequently expelled.

Though there is no record of what Christopher’s attitude was to the lax regime that existed at Westminster, the fact that his sons only remained there a year suggests that it did not please him. They both left in August, 1785, and, through his Egerton in-laws, he organised for them to attend a school run by the Bishop of Chester, until they were to go up to Brasenose College, Oxford. On their return home, the scene they found at Sledmere, where they were reunited with their family for the summer holidays, was one of chaos. The place was a building site, with work on the new servants’ wing at the back of the house being in full swing, and the levelling of the remains of the old village going on at the front. Even the gardens were a mess, with work on the new walled garden and the construction of hot houses going on apace. It was, however, a delightful change from the horrors of public school, and they were happy to see their siblings.

Of the younger children, Christopher, as befitted the third son of a gentleman, was destined for the clergy and attended the Revd Goodinge’s school in Leeds. The two girls, Decima and Elizabeth, remained at home with a governess. They were described by John Simpson after they had paid a visit to him at his parish in Roos as being ‘such good children that they must excite affection and regard for them wherever they go’.9 Mark and Tatton matriculated from Oxford together in May, 1788. A letter written to their father in September, 1788, from the Bishop of Chester, reflects Christopher’s concern that they should be kept away from university low life. ‘I consider the Winter months,’ he wrote, ‘as much more useful with a private Tutor in College, and less dangerous, as giving less occasion to schemes & parties, than those of the Summer, and should think it better to take them away at Ladyday than now, as I have always found more difficulties with young men in the two Summer Terms.’ He recommended a Mr Morris. ‘Whilst [he] keeps them to their studies in the Evening from six to nine, they can never be more safe from drinking than under that engagement constantly kept up.’10

Tatton spent only six terms at Oxford, taking up a post in February, 1790 as an articled Clerk to Atkinson and Farrer, attorneys of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with a view to studying for the Bar, a suitable job for a second son. He travelled to London at the end of January and took lodgings with a Mrs Lockall in Lambs Conduit Street. Scarcely had he arrived there than a letter was delivered from his mother announcing her intention to visit him. His hopes of independence were shaken. ‘Your Mother and Sister unite in wishing to see you this week,’ she wrote, continuing ‘be assured it would be a true comfort to me to have that happiness.’ She made her affection for him obvious. ‘Absence never can erase the Love I have,’ she told him, ‘for God only knows when & where we may be permitted to meet again, therefore embrace if not very inconvenient our present meeting.’ There was also an element of the kind of nagging that any son of seventeen might expect from his mother, when living away from home. ‘If you have not sent the Shrimps to Mrs Ardens at the Leases near Northallerton, let them go as soon as you can, & … also pay Mr Scotcherd eight Shillings for two pound of Cocoa he sent me to Bridlington.’11

Though Tatton’s account book for that first year in London is full of mundane entries for such items as ‘Hairdressing’, ‘Washerwoman’, ‘Fruit’, ‘Breakfast’ and ‘Tarts,’ in amongst them are recorded other payments which give an indication of the kind of life he was leading. London was an extraordinary city, a wonder to those who visited it. From the very outskirts they were struck by its hustle and bustle. ‘The road from Greenwich to London,’ wrote the Prussian traveller, Carl Philipp Moritz in 1782, ‘is actually busier, and far more alive, than the most frequented streets in Berlin; at every step we met people on horseback, in carriages, and foot-passengers.’12 The city thronged with people going about their business at a pace. Briskly walking pedestrians, street-sellers shouting their wares, and trotting sedan-chairmen weaved their way through the streets, each trying to avoid the other as well as the hooves of horses pulling numerous carriages at breakneck speed. ‘The hackney-coachmen make their horses smoke,’ complains Smollett’s Matt Bramble, ‘and the pavement shakes under them; and I have actually seen a waggon pass through Piccadilly at the hand-gallop.’13 Even the river was a crowded thoroughfare. ‘On the Thames itself,’ noted Moritz, ‘are countless swarms of little boats passing and repassing, many with one mast and one sail, and many with none, in which persons of all ranks are carried over. Thus, there is hardly less stir and bustle on this river, than there is in some of its own London’s crowded streets.’14