Recently decided to read this booklet, published in 1988, and which I have had for decades but never read. Sledmere House is a large Georgian period house in the high Yorkshire Wolds, north-west of Driffield. I think it has always been in the ownership of the Sykes family, and remains so today. Georgian, but only because it was rebuilt in faith after a massive fire in 1911, the rebuilding taking place between 1912 and 1917; incidentally with the pediment across the central three bays added then (didn’t exist before). It is interesting that the rebuilding continued through most of the Great War, as also happened at St. Mary’s church, Sculcoates, although there the building work was much delayed and not completed until the early 1920s. The rebuild at Sledmere was happening at the same time as the family organised the Pals detachment known as the Wolds Waggoners for service in the Great War; see the Waggoners Memorial in the estate village, designed by Sir Mark Sykes (now, apparently a grade 1 listed monument).
The glossy booklet (see above) makes reference to pieces of ornate furniture (along with other things), craftsman-built, often with lots of gold leaf and often French. I suspect these sort of acquisitions were often seen by young English aristocrats when on the Grand Tour. If after the French Revolution, such things may have been spoil from the ransacked chateaus of the French aristocracy. No wonder the British ruling classes were so scared of revolution in the 1830s.
Things filter down from the few rich to the many general public. Now everyone wants to do makeovers at home, just that now the items are mass produced, usually in China, and sold at the Range and Dunelm’s. We are all aristocrats now.