Sezincote - The British Empire

British Empire
1815-1914
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Sezincote
by Samuel Pepys Cockerell
Sezincote is an extraordinary mansion in the Cotswolds. It is a legacy of the men who served the East India Company in the 18th, made their fortune and came back to Britain to retire, building extravagant homes with the fortunes they made from working for the company. Sezincote is an English mansion built in the Mughal style to the plans of Samuel Pepys Cockerell. Cockerell had worked for the East India Company and designed the mansion in 1807 for his brother Charles Cockerell. The building had red sandstone walls, a central copper-plated dome, minarets, peacock tail windows and pavilions as well as a Hindu temple to the Hindu sun god and an orangery. There was a garden of paradise with fountains and canals with an interior and garden designed by Thomas Daniel, the great painter of Indian landscape and architecture. The house was the original influence for the Brighton Pavilion as designed by Nash, and the Dome designed by William Pordern, a student of Samuel Cockerell.

Charles Cockerell ran the post office for the East India Company and it was in Calcutta that he met Thomas Daniell. The two men had a love of Indian landscape and culture as did many who worked for the East India Company. At the end of the c18th, many servants of the Company took on Indian mistresses or wives, and accepted conversion to Islam or Hinduism. They embraced Indian culture, and the ideas and artefacts they brought back fascinated the British public.

By the Victorian period though, attitudes to India were changing. With the arrival of British missionaries increasingly from the 1830s, Indian culture was criticised as being barbaric. Missionaries saw their mission as to convert Indians to Christianity, and there was a clamour from those travelling to India, to ban Indiana customs they  disapproved of. These changing attitudes eventually resulted in the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
 
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