In March 1863 Sir Tatton Sykes, 4th baronet, died at Sledmere, his seat in Yorkshire. Almost immediately there were calls for a monument to his memory, and a committee was formed to oversee the project and solicit subscriptions. Various sites were considered, and a competition launched to find the perfect design. Early in 1865 a site high on Garton Hill was decided upon, and the chosen architect, John Gibbs, visited Yorkshire to see the location before the foundation stone was laid.

Sykes (1772-1863) was a pioneering farmer, enriching the soil of the wolds with bone manure made to his own formula. His principal passions were horse racing and fox hunting and he was known as a great host, but also as something of an eccentric. He lived a spartan lifestyle, and expected his wife and children to do the same; he drove his own sheep to market (and as a talented boxer he could fight off any rowdies along the way) and as shown below he continued to wear the costume of an earlier generation throughout his life.

The Illustrated London News began its obituary of Sir Tatton with the story that a Yorkshireman was once asked what was worth seeing in his county. His response was ‘York Minster, Fountains Abbey and Sir Tatton’. Thousands are said to have attended his funeral at Sledmere in 1863.

The competition to design the monument attracted over 150 entries of ‘obelisks, columns, and towers in great variety of style and ornamentation’. The designs were all displayed in a Driffield school-room for two weeks, during which time the committee deliberated and ‘gratified spectators’ called in to peruse the works.

The favoured entry was by John Gibbs (1826-?), an Oxford born architect who had been lauded for his design for the famous Banbury Cross, erected in 1859 to mark the marriage of the Princess Royal, Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter.

The committee was particularly impressed that Gibbs had included a carving of Sykes in his natural habitat – the hunting field. The finished design was featured in The Builder magazine in April 1865, and reached a wider general audience in the pages of the Illustrated London News. As Barbara Jones wrote in Follies and Grottoes (1953) it is ‘so encrusted with detail that description is impossible’, so the editors of both of the contemporary magazines must have been delighted to be sent an illustration.

The foundation stone was laid by Lord Hotham in May 1865, using a ceremonial trowel made for the occasion by a Hull silversmith. The contractors were Messrs Simpson and Malone of Hull, and the ‘celebrated sculptor’ William Forsyth (1833-1915) of Worcester was commissioned to model the figures. Despite gales which threatened to blow down the scaffolding, the final stone was placed on 1 December 1865, although setbacks with the sculpture delayed the inauguration ceremony until November 1866.

The principal inscription remembers that the local populace ‘loved [Sykes] as a friend and honoured him as a landlord’.

The chosen site stood on top of ancient entrenchments, and as work came to a close in 1866 the workmen levelling the ground discovered a number of skeletons. A ‘zealous architect’ by the name of Mortimer hurried to the scene to record the find, and eventually found more than forty graves.

John Gibbs continued to work as an architect and published a number of books on the subject, as well as a novel. In the early 1870s he moved to Leamington Spa and his known history seems to come to a strange end in 1880. In that year the ‘travelling architect’ was in court in Warwick on a charge of entering a property without ‘reasonable excuse’. According to the press reports he was trying to escape a man to whom he owed money, but the newspapers featured two conflicting conclusions: one stated that he was fined 3 shillings, and the other that he was acquitted. Whatever the truth of the matter, after a distinguished career Gibbs seems to disappear without trace.

The monument (grade II) was was damaged by a gale in 1982 but was quickly restored. It stands alongside the B1252 between Garton on the Wolds and Sledmere, and the exterior can be viewed at anytime. The interior can be viewed by prior arrangement with the Sledmere estate office.

Sledmere village and the grounds of Sledmere House are home to a range of wonderful ornaments built in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For more on the house, gardens and park click here.

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A view of the house at Sledmere, painted in 1795, shows a classical orangery west of the kitchen garden. No trace of this building survives today but, mysteriously, another 18th century orangery can be found between the house and the stables.

Little is known about Sledmere’s first orangery. It must have been built in the late 18th century, and is believed to have been pulled down by Sir Tatton Sykes, 5th baronet (1826-1913) after he succeeded to the estate in 1863. Family legend has it that he was a great eccentric who thought flowers ‘nasty untidy things’ and wore countless layers of clothes. Local children would look out for his discarded coats and jackets, knowing that they would be rewarded with a coin when they returned them to the mansion. It is said that on a train journey, when swaddled in clothes, Sir Tatton became overheated. Rather than remove an outer garment he took off his shoes and socks and stuck his feet out of the window. Not a man to do things by halves, he also financed the building or restoration of  17 churches in the Yorkshire Wolds.

200 miles from Sledmere is Fairford Park, near Cirencester in Gloucestershire. The fine mansion was remodelled by Sir John Soane in the late 18th century, and the park was laid out by William Eames, a designer who created landscapes in the natural fashion made famous by Capability Brown. In 1787 it was said that ‘many alterations and improvements’ were ongoing in the park and gardens, and the new Orangery, with a roundel of Flora in the pediment, and four Coade stone plaques showing putti representing the four seasons, probably dates from this period.

In 1945 Fairford was bought by Ernest Cook, a former partner in the pioneering travel company Thomas Cook & Son. He had used his wealth to acquire 17 country estates, and his original plan was to donate them to the National Trust. At Fairford there were complications as land on the estate was still occupied by a Polish Displaced Persons camp, and until that was legally de-requisitioned the gift could not be made. Later, Cook’s relationship with the National Trust soured (the trust’s James Lee-Milne found the park at Fairford ‘flat and dull’ and decided the property was ‘unacceptable’). Only a handful of the properties were donated, with the others, including Fairford, placed in the Ernest Cook Trust, founded in 1952 and continuing today.

The house at Fairford was demolished in the mid-1950s to make way for a new secondary school, and the orangery, by now in a poor condition, was dismantled soon after and the facade given to the National Trust for safekeeping. For reasons unknown, the trust decided not to re-erect it in one of its many parks as originally planned, but instead gave it to the Sykes family of Sledmere on the condition that once rebuilt there would be public access. The Bath stone front, including the Coade stone ornaments, remained in storage for some years before Sir Tatton Sykes, 8th bart, commissioned the highly-regarded architectural practice Francis Johnson and Partners of Bridlington to restore and reuse the stonework as the front of a new orangery built of local brick. A plaque on the rear (private) elevation, which overlooks a swimming pool, records that it was completed in 2005.

The original design of the orangery is attributed to Sir John Soane, and dated c.1790, although no firm evidence has been found. The new interior was therefore modelled on the Music Room at Earsham in Norfolk, a Soane garden building of a similar date. New plasterwork was commissioned from the master craftsmen at Stevensons of Norwich, including medallions with the Sykes heraldic triton, seen on many buildings on the estate. The building was awarded a commendation for a ‘New Building in a Georgian Context’ by the Georgian Group in 2012.

For Sledmere see https://www.sledmerehouse.com

For the Sykes churches see https://www.eychurches.org.uk/images/stories/leaflets/Sykes_Open_Churches_Leaflet.pdf

The Ernest Cook Trust continues today as the U.K.’s foremost providers and funders of outdoor learning, helping children and young people, particularly those who are disadvantaged, develop a love and understanding of the natural world. Their offices are in the grounds of Fairford Park https://ernestcooktrust.org.uk

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