Basildon Park and The "English Hindoostan"

This week I visited Basildon Park in Berkshire. Basildon is a stunning late 18^th century country house in the Palladian style with fashionable Adam interiors. It was built between 1776 and 1783 for Sir Francis Sykes, a nabob who had made his money in the East India Company and wanted to have a country house that reflected his wealth and grandeur. Basildon isn’t huge and has quite an intimate atmosphere and it is absolutely gorgeously decorated.  All the reception rooms are designed to impress the visitor, from the entrance up a double flight of steps into the central hall, to the grand staircase lit from above, to the octagonal drawing room and long, pillared dining room. Basildon Park was the location for filming the Netherfield scenes in Pride and Prejudice and visiting it gave me a fine idea of what a grand country house would look like and also feel like to visit as a guest in the early 19th century. 

Something I learned about Basildon Park from my visit was that it was part of a group of properties referred to as “the English Hindoostan” because so many of Sykes’ fellow nabobs lived in the vicinity, having either built or acquired properties in the area. One of the reasons for this was that the nabobs were an isolated group, disliked for their wealth and their nouveau riche lifestyle, and so they tended to gravitate towards one another socially and lived in the same geographical area. In Berkshire there were at least 30 houses associated with nabobs. Of these the most famous was Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, who lived at Purley Hall. Another, General Richard Smith of Chilton Foliat, was said to epitomise everything the Ton disliked about nabobs. He was loud, pretentious, arrogant, extreme in his politics, extravagant and a shocking gambler.

Other notorious nabobs in the area included Thomas “Diamond” Pitt, grandfather of William Pitt who lived at Swallowfield. He gained his nickname from his habit of collecting enormous diamonds, one of which, The Regent’s Diamond, was sold to the Duke of Orleans, added to the French Crown and is now in the Louvre.  It was valued at almost half a million pounds in 1791.

At Caversham Park, where I also visited this week, the landowner Major Charles Marsack was the illegitimate grandson of King George II and at Foxley’s Manor in Bray there was Henry Vansittart, Governor of Bengal, who was involved in the famous Hellfire Club of Medmenham Abbey. All these extraordinary characters are rich inspiration for a writer! On a final literary note: Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist was rumoured to be based on the character of Sir Francis Sykes’ grandson!

Nicola Cornick

The Inspiration for the Royal Pavilion?

Last weekend I was out walking in the Cotswolds and almost literally stumbled across Sezincote house and gardens. I had no idea that a house like this existed in the Gloucestershire countryside and thought at first that I was seeing things.

Colonel John Cockerell, a grandson of the nephew of Samuel Pepys, bought the Sezincote estate in 1795 when he returned from Bengal. He had been in the service of the East India Company and on his death in 1798 left the estate to his brother Charles. Charles Cockerell, created a baronet in 1809 and MP for Evesham, employed another brother, the magnificently named Samuel Pepys Cockerell to design him a house on the estate in the Indian manner. SP Cockerell was an architect of some standing, Surveyor to the East India Company and he worked on the design for Sezincote with the artist Thomas Daniell, who had spent ten years in India making aquatints, watercolours and oils of Indian buildings and landscapes. Daniell had an unparallelled knowledge of Indian architecture and at Sezincote he and Cockerell designed a house that on the outside at least was a mixture of Hindu and Islamic detail. The style was reminiscent of the reign of Akbar, the Mogul Emperor who ruled from 1556 to 1605. Akbar deliberately mixed the Hindu and Islamic elements in architecture in an effort at cultural integration. Thus the pillars, the horizontal beams and the many depctions of the Lotus at Sezincote are inspired by Hindu design whilst the chattris (small minarets) and other elements are Islamic. The dome, a characteristic of Muslim architecture representing heart and heaven and a symbol of peace and tranquility, shows strong Persian influence.

Sezincote's charming and interesting architectural fusion is apparently not reflected inside the house, which is classical, or in the garden, which is decidely English. Although the house was designed and built for an eighteenth century generation who loved and respected Indian culture, by the time that it was completed in 1812, British attitudes towards India were changing. Nabobs such as the Cockerells were often looked down upon and were suspected of decadence. Some nineteenth century visitors to Sezincote described it as "grotesque."

Sezincote is, however, claimed to be the inspiration for the Prince Regent's Royal Pavilion at Brighton, though when I was reading about the house I could not find any information on how this happened. It is said that the Prince Regent chose an Indian style for its picturesque qualities and The Royal Pavilion is decorated in the chinoiserie style inside, of course, which is very different from both the Indian inspiration and the classical interior of Sezincote.

Sezincote opens to visitors in May and I shall definitely go back for a wander around the house and gardens and to marvel at this architectural jewel sitting in the Gloucestershire countryside!