Jewel in the Sykes Church Trail crown has its own secrets for you to discover

THERE is a lovely 'secret' room tucked away above the porch of St Mary's Church, Sledmere. It is reached via a narrow, winding staircase and dimly lit by a single window.

The stone walls are covered by a rich black and white tapestry, and there is a single table and chair, with a few books: the Bible, The Pilgrim's Progress, Dante and Milton among them. A second aperture - not exactly a window - looks out into the nave of the church below.

It is popularly known as 'Sir Mark's Room' after Sir Mark Sykes, the sixth baronet and grandfather of the eighth baronet, Sir Tatton Sykes.

"This is where Sir Tatton's grandfather used to do a lot of his work," says churchwarden Keith Clark. "And he used to look out of there" - he indicates the opening looking down into the nave - "to see who was at the service on a Sunday. Anybody who wasn't there... he'd go around to their house and enquire why!"

From the outside, St Mary's doesn't look anything special. It is clean and well-maintained, with satisfying lines. But Nikolaus Pevsner, author of the famous architectural guide The Buildings Of England, once described it as 'dull'.

Inside, however, it is anything but.

The first thing that strikes you when you walk into the church's cool, dim interior is the soaring height of the nave and chancel, with their Gothic style arches and barrel-shaped carved wooden roofs.

It has almost the proportions of a Cathedral, those arches and roof spaces seeming to reach upwards towards heaven. In many Gothic churches - though not this one - you will see part of the ceiling painted blue, with gold stars, as if you were looking up to heaven itself, says Roy Thompson, the secretary of the York Diocese church tourism group.

St Mary's isn't actually Gothic, however: it is neo-Gothic - and it was built not much more than 100 years ago.

It is one of the extraordinary collection of East Yorkshire churches that were built or lovingly restored by the 5th baronet, another Sir Tatton Sykes, between 1866 and 1913. There are almost 20 of them all told on what is now known as the Sykes Church Trail. But Sir Tatton may well have regarded St Mary's, built in the shadow of Sledmere House itself, to be the jewel in the crown.

The church was built on the site of two earlier churches, the earliest of which is thought to date back to about 1200 - and Sir Tatton didn't stint. He is said to have spent about £60,000 - a fortune in the 1890s - and employed one of the leading architects of the day, Temple Moore.

Everywhere you look inside the church there are beautiful details. There is a lovely carved chancel screen that divides nave from chancel, with a platform running across the top. This is reached by another narrow winding stair, which runs past the inner workings of the church organ. The stairway is cramped and dusty, and the platform is not used for sermons, says Keith Clark - at least not these days - but it does give a commanding view of the pulpit and nave down below.

Beneath the stained glass window of the Lady Chapel, meanwhile, are a series of stunning terracotta wall tiles, each with its own unique design. Look carefully, says Keith Clark's fellow churchwarden John Southwick, and you can see a series of tiles representing the crucifixion. One shows Christ's head, crowned with thorns; another his heart; another the hands and feet, pierced by nails.

It is the Chancel itself, however, that is the crowning glory of this Victorian church. The saints are everywhere, as the guidebook puts it. They are in the Chancel's stunning Victorian stained glass - the Old Testament saints in the great East Window; the new testament saints such as St Paul, St Mary Magdalen, St Mark and St John in the north windows.

Most striking of all, however, is the carved wooden reredos behind the altar. This features a crucified Christ with, ranged to either side of him, the twelve apostles. They are worth studying closely, because the detail is astonishing.

Christ's head is crowned with thorns, the muscles on his outstretched arms taut with strain; yet his bearded face is calm and serene. St Peter, meanwhile, who holds a book in his left hand and the keys to heaven in his right, is shown as a lean, ascetic, scholarly man. The grain of the wood somehow adds an air of even greater dignity to his features.

Both Keith Clark and John Southwick have lived in Sledmere - or, in Keith's case, nearby Croome - all their lives: and both admit to loving this church.

Keith, who rents a farm from the present Sir Tatton Sykes, was also a member of the local Methodist congregation until its church closed recently. But he has been a church warden at St Marys for many years. There is something very special about the church, he says.

John agrees. "I think it is the windows, and the woodwork - the carving," he says. "My father was a joiner, so I appreciate that. And I love the peacefulness."

He also loves the sense of continuity the village and the church give him. He worked all his life for the present Sir Tatton Sykes, rising to become manager of a 2,000 acre farm. " And I used to be a choirboy here," he says. "My mother used to worship here..."

* St Mary's Church, Sledmere. Park at the war memorial in Sledmere. Walk to the church along a footpath opposite.

The 'Sir Mark's Room' and the stairway leading to the platform running across the top of the chancel screen are generally kept locked, but otherwise the church is open 24 hours a day.

Services: Holy Communion, 11am on the second and fourth Sunday of each month.

If you are in Sledmere to visit the church - or to visit Sledmere House itself - it is worth taking in the village's two war memorials while you are there: and the wonderful little Wagoners' Museum at the entrance to Sledmere House.

The first war memorial you come to - a tall spire opposite the entrance to the church - is a replica of an Eleanor Cross. It dates from 1895 and was designed for Sir Tatton Sykes by Temple Moore, who also designed St Mary's Church. It was originally built simply as a village cross, but was later adapted as a war memorial when brasses representing local men who died in the war were added.

A little further along on the same side of the road is a very different war memorial: The Wagoner's Monument. This was designed by Sir Mark Sykes, the 6th baronet, himself, and is dedicated to the Wolds Wagoners Reserve, a regiment that Sir Mark raised from the local population to fight in the First World War.

It is an unusual but very striking monument, much shorter than the Eleanor Cross but decorated with beautiful carved reliefs of men at war. Thee have earned it the nickname the 'Bayeaux Tapestry' of monuments.

A little further along the road, in the entrance to Sledmere House itself, is the Wagoners' Museum. This tells the story, using old photographs and wartime memorabilia, of the Wolds Wagoners Reserve - a unit of 1,200 skilled wagon drivers raised by Sir Mark from amongst the men of his East Yorkshire estates. At the beginning of the war, they were sent to the front to join horse transport companies, before later being absorbed into regular transport units.

"They were men who were working on farms who were recruited to take the wagons and horses over for World War One," says Roy Thompson, the secretary of the York Diocese church tourism group. A unique East Yorkshire contribution, in other words, to that long ago war which is so much in our minds this year.