Sir Tatton Sykes, 4th Baronet

Sir Tatton Sykes, 4th Baronet (1772–1863) was an English landowner and stock breeder, known as a patron of horse racing.

Life A younger brother of Sir Mark Masterman Sykes, he was educated from 1784 at Westminster School. Matriculating at Brasenose College, Oxford, on 10 May 1788, he spent several terms there. For some years he was an articled clerk to Atkinson & Farrar, attorneys in Lincoln's Inn Fields; and then was employed for a period in a banking-house in Kingston upon Hull.

Sheep farmer In 1803 Sykes began sheep farming and breeding by purchasing ten pure Bakewells from Mr. William Sanday's flock at Holme Pierrepoint. These sheep he kept at Barton, near Malton, where he soon became a ram-letter. At one of Robert Colling's sales he gave 156 guineas for the shearling Ajax. Until nearly eighty he took an annual June ride into the midlands to attend Burgess's, Buckley's, and Stone's sales of stock. In September 1861 he held his own fifty-eighth and last annual sale of sheep.

Last years

Sykes was 74 in 1846 when he led in William Scott's horse—called after him, Sir Tatton Sykes—a winner of the St. Leger Stakes. His last visit to Doncaster was in 1862, to see his seventy-fourth St. Leger. He died at Sledmere on 21 March 1863, and was buried on 27 March in the presence of three thousand persons. A portrait of him was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1805, and another by Sir Francis Grant in 1848.

Family Sykes married, on 19 June 1822, Mary Anne, second daughter of Sir William Foulis, bart. She died on 1 February 1861, leaving Sir Tatton Sykes, 5th Baronet, Christopher Sykes of Brantingham Thorpe, M.P. for the East Riding of Yorkshire, and six daughters.