The Big House: The Story of a Country House and its Family
Please note that some images were unavailable for the electronic edition.The highly praised biography of an archetypal great house and the family who lived there for over 250 years.‘The Big House’ is the biography of a great country house and the lives of the Sykes family who lived there, with varying fates, for the next two hundred and fifty years. It is a fascinating social history set against the backdrop of a changing England, with a highly individual, pugnacious and self-determining cast, including: ‘Old Tat’ Sykes, said to be one of the great sights of Yorkshire (the author’s great-great-great-grandfather), who wore 18th-century dress to the day of his death at ninety-one in 1861. His son was similarly eccentric, wearing eight coats that he discarded gradually throughout the day in order to keep his body temperature at a constant. He was forced to marry, aged forty-eight, eighteen-year-old Jessica Cavendish-Bentick – a lively and highly intelligent woman who relieved the boredom of her marriage by acquiring a string of lovers, writing novels and throwing extravagant parties (her nickname became ‘Lady Satin Tights’), all the while accumulating debts that ended in a scandalous court case. Their son, Mark, died suddenly whilst brokering the peace settlement at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I; Sledmere was destroyed by fire shortly afterwards.But the rebuilt Sledmere rose from the flames to resound again with colourful, brilliant characters in the 1920s and 1930s including the author’s grandmother, Lily, who had been a celebrated bohemian in Paris.‘The Big House’ is vividly written and meticulously researched using the Sykes’ own family’s papers and photographs. In this splendid biography of place and time, Christopher Simon Sykes has resuscitated the lives of his ancestors and their glorious home from the 18th- through to the 20th-century.
Читать The Big House: The Story of a Country House and its Family онлайн беплатно
THE
BIG HOUSE
The Story of a Country House
and its Family
Christopher Simon Sykes
To the memory of my grandfather, Mark Sykes, and
for the new generation, my children, Lily and Joby.
‘When I come back here, all the time I have been away seems like a dream. Everything is exactly the same here; the same conversation, the same jokes, the books in the same place on the same tables. My rooms just as I left them. One cannot believe that five months of incident and excitement have passed away. Home seems very calm and comfortable; a refuge quite inaccessible to any of the vexations and troubles of the world.’
Christopher Sykes, March, 1854.
In the afternoon of Tuesday, 23 May, 1911, in the village of Sledmere, high up on the East Yorkshire Wolds, a passer-by would have been confronted with a shocking and terrifying sight. The large grey stone Georgian house, dominating the village and clearly visible from the main road, was ablaze, thick black smoke and flames pouring from its roof. Had they been there around three o’clock, they would have met with the heavy horses and wooden wagons of the Malton Fire Brigade, at the end of an arduous journey of twelve miles, which had included the navigation of two long steep hills, come to join their fellow-firemen from the other local town of Driffield, and the entire population of the village as they fought to save whatever they could of the contents of a house that had been at the centre of their lives for over 150 years.
The fire had started because a roof-beam protruded into the chimney above the kitchen in the north-east wing. It had probably smouldered for days before igniting, and even then the progress of the flames was slow, inching their way forward until they made contact with other beams supporting the roof. So it was that by the time the first suspicious wisps of smoke were seen oozing out of the brickwork of a chimney, the fire had really begun to take hold. The alarm was raised at about noon, just as the elderly owner of the house, Sir Tatton Sykes, was sitting down to his lunch. The great bell of the hall was rung, and all the men employed on the estate, farmhands, grooms, coachmen, foresters, bricklayers and carpenters, were summoned to help. Even the children were called out from the village school. The agent, Mr Henry Cholmondeley, burst into the Dining-Room to tell Sir Tatton that the house was on fire and that he must leave at once. His warnings went unheeded, for at that moment the old man was interested in nothing but his food. ‘I must finish my pudding,’ he said, ‘finish my pudding.’
There were two fire brigades in the district, the nearest at Driffield, eight miles away, and the other four miles further still, at Malton. Both were summoned. In the meantime, Henry Cholmondeley, who had no illusions about how long they would take to arrive, organised all present into a human chain and began a bucket service from the reservoir which supplied the house. Just as this was beginning to prove useless, since it was impossible to get access to the seat of the fire, a neighbour from Malton, Mr Freddy Strickland, arrived by motor car, bringing with him Captain Jackson of the Fire Brigade and a quantity of hose. This was attached to fire hydrants near the house and ultimately unsuccessful attempts were made to play water on to the flames now issuing from the roof at the north-east corner.
Henry Cholmondeley then took a vital decision. Seeing that the fire was still burning fairly slowly, he ordered his human chain to concentrate all efforts on salvaging as much of the contents of the house as possible, many of which were great treasures. Starting on the upper bedroom floors, with the men at the head, then the women and finally, spilling out on to the lawn, the children at the far end, they began by rescuing anything that was easily movable, such as china, glass, pictures, carpets and smaller pieces of furniture. In the vast Library another group was engaged in throwing the thousands of books out of the windows into sheets and blankets held by those below. Others were unscrewing fine mahogany doors, prising out marble chimneypieces and carefully taking down the collection of family portraits.
‘The servants behaved with wonderful pluck and coolness,’ observed a reporter from the local paper, ‘in removing furniture from the burning rooms, the maidservants acting as coolly and bravely as the men. The fire, however, was now gaining rapid hold and was fanned by a slight breeze, which caused all the upper rooms of the east wing to blaze fiercely.’
