The Big House: The Story of a Country House and its Family. Christopher Sykes Simon

agricultural thinkers, amongst whom Christopher certainly numbered himself, enclosure was the way forward. It enabled landowners to improve their farming techniques, to consolidate their property into larger farms, and to add to its value by building farmhouses and outbuildings. Enclosed land also steadily rose in value, an important consideration since before 1800 each enclosure required the passing of an individual act of Parliament, making it an expensive business. A valuation carried out by Christopher’s steward, Robert Dunn, in May, 1776, estimated that the land at Sledmere unenclosed was worth between 1s. 3d. and 20s. an acre, rising to 2s.–20s. on enclosure, and 3s. 6d.–20s. after fifteen years.³²

      Though family legend has always maintained that Christopher was the pioneer in this department, the truth is that he was carrying on a tradition that had been started by his Uncle Richard, when he took in hand the land which formed The Avenue, and later an area to its west, to form the Park. In Richard’s lifetime he spent £40,000 on buying and enclosing land to consolidate the estate. ‘I yesterday signed an Article of Agreement,’ he had written to his brother Joseph in July, 1760, ‘to pay £1,550 for £31 a year net Tythe rent of thirty-six Oxgangs at East Heslerton which is fifty years purchase, but if an inclosure take place may not be too dear.’³³ Christopher just did it on a larger scale. He began in 1771, when his account book recorded that he had spent £2,051 on ‘Inclosing’ at East Heslerton, and by 1775 he had instructed Robert Dunn to start on Sledmere. ‘Mr Dunn has perhaps already informed you,’ he wrote to one of his neighbours, Luke Lillingstone, in January, 1776, ‘that I propose to enclose Sledmire’,³⁴ explaining to him that ‘In Sledmire … for some Years past there has not been above 500 Acres in Tillage … but upon the Inclosure the whole will be divided into three large and two smaller farms with not less than 1,500 or 1,600 Acres in Tillage.’³⁵ In his lifetime Christopher was to spend £180,000 on adding 18,000 acres to the estate, and on enclosing and improving the land.

      Apart from two estates bought in the early 1770s, at Wetwang and Myton Carr, most of Christopher’s major acquisitions took place in the 1780s, after his father’s death. In the intervening years he concentrated his attention on laying out a new landscape at Sledmere. He had begun planting as early as 1771, when he spent £70. 15s. 7d. on trees, taking delivery of two consignments, one bought from Mr Dixon, the second, larger order from Mr Telford. This was the start of a programme which began on a relatively small scale, with about fifteen acres a year being planted, and became increasingly ambitious. Being young and modern with his finger on the pulse of everything new in the world of science and art he probably found his uncle’s taste dull and outmoded. His earliest attempts at stamping his own ideas on the landscape can be seen in two drawings he made on a single sheet of paper which exists in the Library at Sledmere. The first is of Mr Perfects Design of the Plantations, which depicts the two belts of trees on either side of the Mere. The second shows ‘The alterations of the Plantations’. On the east side, which runs next to the village street, the belt was to be ‘fill’d up with Trees to cover the Houses’, while its inside edge adjoining the Mere was given a ragged, more informal appearance. The belt to the west, adjoining the church, was to be cut into shapes, forming a series of circles and a diamond with, interweaving them, ‘two little Serpentine Walks to Cross the plantation’.³⁶

      In 1775 Christopher decided to call in a professional to help him with his schemes: Thomas White, a landscape designer and nurseryman from West Retford near Gainsborough, who had previously worked for the celebrated Capability Brown on two major local projects at Sandbeck, South Yorkshire, and Temple Newsham, near Leeds. In April, 1776, he delivered to Christopher A General Plan for the Improvement of the Grounds at Sledmere, beautifully executed in watercolour on paper mounted on linen. This proposed the building of a new house to be sited directly in front of the existing stables, with the two buildings separated by lawns and a wooded area. It also showed the sites of three yet-to-be-designed farms, each of which would act as an ‘eyecatcher’ at the end of a vista. The plan covered a large area, with shelter belts proposed all round the boundaries and plantations topping the deep dales which are a feature of the Wolds. The most dramatic aspect of the new design was the sweeping away of Uncle Richard’s entire Avenue, leaving the area directly to the south of the house almost totally devoid of trees, and the filling in of the Mere. Although planting had already started on the boundaries, and some of White’s ideas were eventually to be incorporated into the final plan of the landscape, it is evident that Christopher was not entirely happy with the overall design. Though White continued for some years to supply him with trees, he was dropped the following year in favour of his more famous former employer.

      On 18 September, 1777, Christopher recorded in his diary that ‘the Great Brown came to Sledmere in the morning early’.³⁷ Lancelot Brown was the best-known landscape designer of the day, the successor to Kent, who died in 1748, and it is a measure of Christopher’s ambition that he chose to employ him. He would certainly have come highly recommended by two Yorkshire neighbours, Edwin Lascelles at Harewood, and Sir William St Quintin at Scampston, both of whose parks he had recently transformed. Brown stayed for a day and although no details exist of exactly what passed between them on this visit, one must assume that he was shown around the grounds and that they discussed what part of the existing landscape was to be retained and incorporated into any new scheme. With the enclosure of Sledmere progressing at a pace, Christopher would have been especially keen to finalise the positioning of the three new farms, to be called Castle, Life Hill and Marramatte. Brown left early the following morning, 19 September, his client’s mind thoroughly concentrated on the great task ahead.

      Christopher was a ‘hands on’ gardener who had undoubtedly read Horace Walpole’s essay ‘On Modern Gardening’, written in 1770, in which he had stated his belief that ‘the possessor, if he has any taste, must be the best designer of his own improvements. He sees his situation in all seasons of the year, at all times of the day. He knows where beauty will not clash with convenience, and observes in his silent walks or accidental rides a thousand hints that must escape a person who in a few days sketches out a pretty picture, but has not had leisure to examine the details and relations of every part.’³⁸ He lost no time in getting started, and the very next week found him personally ‘staking out’ a series of new plantations. ‘My method of planting,’ he wrote, ‘is in small holes made in the turf … The holes are made in the autumn at three feet asunder, and eight or ten inches over, returning the soil into the hole at the time of making it with the turf downwards.’ A month later, on 30 October, he ‘began to plant … having prepared several thousand holes’.³⁹ The next day he made a note in his pocket book of an order he had placed with Thomas White for a further 109,500 trees – ‘20,000 seedling Larches, 50,000 Scotch fir seedling, 5,000 Spruce 2y.o, 10,000 Spruce 1y.o, 1,500 Weymouth pine, 2,000 Silver fir, 10,000 Beech seedling, 1,000 Sycamore, and 10,000 seedling Birch of 1 or 2y.o’.⁴⁰

      One of the reasons for the success of Christopher’s planting was that, as in all he did, he had immersed himself in the subject, learning everything that there was to know, and in the process becoming an expert in the chosen field. He understood that the most successful trees were those raised by the proprietor from seedling, taken from the bed exactly when they were required and planted immediately, so that they did not suffer from being out of the ground for too long. To this end he had two nurseries, one at Sledmere, the other at Wheldrake. An endpaper in the diary shows that his immediate requirements were 300,000 trees from White, 136,000 from John and George Telford, nurserymen from York, and 33,000 from William Shiells of Dalkeith, the majority of which would have been seedlings.

      It was not only at Sledmere that Christopher had been planting. ‘Mrs S. was taken ill at three,’ reads the last entry in his pocket book for 1777, on 27 December, ‘and delivered between four and five in