The Sykes family and East Riding Churches

Christopher Howse had a recent article in the Daily Telegraph about the very considerable outlay by the Sykes family in the nineteenth century on church restoration on their estates in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It can be seen at Sacred Mysteries: A fully tattooed church in the East Riding

There is more about these churches at Sykes Churches Trail

The history of the Sykes family is set out by Wikipedia at Sykes family of Sledmere and the life of the principal patron of church restoration at Sir Tatton Sykes, 5th Baronet. The life of his son, remembered for his central part in the Sykes-Picot Pact of 1916, is at Mark Sykes

The continuing legacy of the family is very obvious to anyone who reads the landscape of the Wolds around their country house at Sledmere. Not only their substantial late Georgian country house but the village at Sledmere, its monuments and the churches around but the countryside with its classic enclosure landscape of rectangular fields, straight roads and wide grass verges are all a tribute to the energy of the family as improving landowners.

The Sykes churches are works that are distinctive and indeed are fine craftsmanship. They are unquestionably High Victorian and very different from the style developed by Bodley and Comper in the last years of the nineteenth century. Their churches and church restorations could well pass for a pre-reformation interior, but whilst the Sykes churches might follow the principles of the medieval age, they are unquestionably of their own time. 

To be honest I must say I do not especially like the works the Sykes’ commissioned, whilst still being able to admire the skill of the artists and artisans involved in producing it as well as the abundant generosity of the family in giving it to communities in a relatively remote rural area. Definitely worth seeing if you are on the Wolds.