Sledmere

Our View

Descended from successful Yorkshire merchants, the family of Sir Tatton Sykes can trace their ownership of Sledmere House back in an unbroken line to the middle of the 17th century. It was Richard Sykes, a High Sheriff of Yorkshire, who demolished the old Tudor house and began construction of a new red-brick mansion in 1751. His brother, ‘Parson Sykes’, created a baronet for his pioneering agricultural work, inherited the estate and it was his son, Sir Christopher, who transformed the house. Acting as his own architect, though consulting John Carr and Samuel Wyatt, he encased the house in Nottinghamshire stone and added new ranges to the north and south. He then engaged ‘Capability’ Brown to landscape his 2,000 acres (809ha) of parkland – a job that entailed demolishing the old village and rebuilding it out of sight to the east. A disastrous fire in 1911 left only the four walls standing, though an efficient salvage operation saved virtually all the contents of the house. It was rebuilt, to the original designs, by the York architect, Walter Brierley, who reinstated plasterwork from the original moulds and redecorated the house following contemporary watercolours of the rooms. The grim and forbidding aspect of the exterior is entirely belied by the opulence of the interior. Remarkably intricate plasterwork ceilings and friezes, picked out in paint and gold, are a feature of every room: each one is different, though classical themes prevail.