Giving Prinny ideas - India in the Cotswolds

 

Brighton Pavilion

Anyone who enjoys a story of badly behaved royalty will recall Queen Victoria's son 'Bertie' and his extravagant Regency lifestyle as he waited nearly sixty years until his ascent to the throne as Edward VII in 1901. Perhaps the only good thing to come out of Prinny's profligacy is the astonishing Brighton Pavilion. If you're unfamiliar with the place, or need another wander, there's a virtual tour on the Brighton Museums website.

Nevertheless, this post is not about Brighton Pavilion, which my love and I visited on his final trip  home in 2019. In time, I may revisit the photos and take you there. 

a weathered copper onion dome?

 

This post is about Sezincote, a two-hundred year old neo-Mughal palace in Gloucestershire, north Cotswolds, which I toured with my brother in law in September. It was a visit to Sezincote in 1807 that's said to have given the Prince Regent the IDEA for Brighton Pavilion!

So enough about the Prince Regent, let's meet the fellow who managed to impress him. 

From the Sezincote website:"The house was the whim of Colonel John Cockerell, grandson of the diarist Samuel Pepys, who returned to England having amassed a fortune in the East India Company. John died in 1798, three years after his return, and the estate passed to his youngest brother Charles, who had also worked for the company. He commissioned his brother Samuel, an architect, to design and build an Indian house in the Mogul style of Rajasthan, complete with minarets, peacock-tail windows, jali-work railings and pavilions."

I love that Sezincote is still owned by the family, and run by a brother and sister team. The estate operates 'like a proper farm' featuring mixed farming on 3500 acres (or 2000 - depends on which page of the website you visit. Different ways to categorize the holdings?)

We  politely queued for our guided tour under the watchful eye of a herd of Limousin cattle grazing beyond the ha-ha. The beauty was endless. I am always astounded at the size of English estates in this (to us Canadians) tiny country.

My brother in law knew all about the unique Hindustan Ambassador parked out front, its exquisite interior done up like a local taxi. This rugged little version of a Morris Oxford was built in India from 1957 to 2024.

Today the family endures groups of paid visitors to 'have a look round' some of the principal rooms. I loved the Greek Revival interiors and stories of some of the tresures on display (no photos please) but it was the exotic exterior of the house and outbuildings, and the gardens that transported me. 

The bewitching gardens were designed with input from Sir Henry Repton, the gardener's English landscape gardener. The ravine gardens feature pools and streams, with stone bridges and stepping stones, massive bog-loving plants, exotic trees and always another grotto or temple discover. 

Visitors enter via an Indian bridge adorned with Brahmin bulls and enter a landscape that doesn't feel quite English, despite all the wonderful oak trees (for which the place is named.)

The gardens were designed to evoke Moghul paradise gardens. Now if I  haven't sent you to Monty Don before, he's a BBC presenter, with a gardening show and dozens of documentaries about famed gardens throughout the world, to his credit. Here's a tiny peek. As I write this, his entire series on Paradise Gardens is available on YouTube. Go have a look.

Indian Bridge

Here's the Sezincote website, if my blathering has left you wanting more. It features a link to a half-hour documentary produced by Arte TV, an European culture channel. It's better looked at than listened to in places, where English narration and French dubbing overlap. 

head gardener's cottage/farm buildings

tent room

And if you'd like to read more about England's love affair with the architecture of India, I'll link you to a post on my pretty much dormant blog 'AncestralRoofs', where I stepped off-mandate in 2019 and enthused about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. The Durbar Room celebrated Victoria's role as Empress of India...quite the dining room.