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

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.’

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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.’

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.’

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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.’

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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.’

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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’.

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.’

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.’

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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.’

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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.’

(#litres_trial_promo) 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’.

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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’.

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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.’

(#litres_trial_promo) 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,’

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.’

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‘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.’

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.’

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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’,

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.’

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.’

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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.’

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.’

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.