Sir Tatton Sykes, 5th Baronet
Sir Tatton Sykes, 5th Baronet (1826-1913) was another aristocrat with strong opinions on pretty much everything. For example, it was his opinion (and probably his alone) that the human body must be kept at a constant temperature. Thus he had numerous coats made, designed to fit over one another, all of which he would don first thing in the morning, which, as the day progressed, he would shed according to climate. As he would simply leave them wherever he happened to be, local children could benefit from a standing offer of 1 shilling for each coat’s safe return.
Tatton was also meticulous about his diet, which almost exclusively consisted of cold rice pudding. In 1911, his house at Sledmere caught fire while its owner was mid-pudding, and rather than escape with his terrified servants Tatton responded to the inferno with the words, ‘I must eat my pudding!’ Tatton eventually emerged, and simply sat on a chair on the lawn for the next 18 hours watching his house burned to the ground. Such was his dedication to rice pudding that, even though he travelled across the world a great deal, he always took his rice-pudding cook with him.
Tatton had many peculiar dislikes. Upon inheriting Sledmere, one of Tatton’s first acts was to forbid the tenants on the estate from growing flowers: ‘nasty, untidy things… if you wish to grow flowers, grow cauliflowers!’ He also had a fundamental objection to people using their front doors and, as well as forbidding his tenants to do so, when he had houses built for his workers these had a trompe l’oeil in place of a front entrance and a proper door only at the rear. Having surprisingly sold the famous Sykes racehorse stud, Tatton also restored and built 18 churches.