 Sezincote
Secreted in the depths of the Cotswolds, an area famous for its lovely local
stone cottages and its picturesque little country villages, is a wonderfully
individual house most incongruous to this environment. A large turquoise
onion dome is the first clue to its typically Muslim architecture, which
is delightfully combined with a strong Hindu flavour. Thought to be
the only Moghul building to survive in Western Europe, these imaginative
designs were quite the fashion in the early 1800s, and reflected the
growing importance of India within the realm. Coupled with the fact
that the estate was bought by Colonel John Cockerell on his return from
Bengal, it is not difficult to see why the house adopted this 'Indianised'
influence.
John Cockerell died only
three years after buying Sezincote, and it was his brother, Charles, that
commissioned Samuel Pepys Cockerell to complete a house that would make
him feel at home, having also worked for many years at the East India
Company. The result is a harmonious blend of the cultural influences,
creating a decorative house with a long, curved Orangery to one side,
that is both pleasing and restful to the eye. Furthermore, the gardens
provide a real sense of mystique and tranquillity with their water features,
temples and statues, and put the house nicely into context. Humphrey Repton
was known to have assisted in the design of the gardens but it is unclear
whether the entire project can be attributed to him.
Surprisingly, the internal
décor is quite classical and no attempt was ever made to continue the
Indian theme so apparent on the outside of the building. Apparently,
a local travelling vicar who stumbled upon Sezincote one day was heard
describing the house as "a dark and damp house in such vulgar taste".
Certainly there is no evidence today that tallies with this rather
unkind description. By 1944, when Sir Cyril and Lady Kleinwort bought the
estate, the house and gardens were in a very poor condition, and they
devoted their time and energy into restoring Sezincote to its original glorious
appearance. Every room has received careful and costly attention to detail.
In the drawing room the huge
drapes, exact replicas of the originals, have a wonderful deep tufted
pelmet fringe which reportedly took one man in London a full two years
to complete. Perhaps the most outrageous room in the house is the Peacock
bedroom, displaying such an array of styles and influences that they somehow
all gel together in a delightfully haphazard way. The centrepiece is a
four-poster, canopied bed, built around the original tent poles from Sir
Charles Cockerell's tent room, and topped with an onion dome. All the
reception rooms used to be on the first floor but the Kleinwort's transformed
the ground floor billiard room into the family dining room.
Still very much a family
home with lots of trinkets and interesting objects, it is almost inconceivable
that this moderate residence influenced John Nash's remodelling of the
Brighton Royal Pavilion's fantastic oriental exterior in the 1820s. |
