Sezincote House

Sezincote House is a country house constructed between 1800 and 1805 by Samuel Pepys Cockerell, Thomas Daniell, and Humphry Repton for Sir Charles Cockerell. It is a building of group value. The house is built of orange ashlar limestone with a slate roof and a copper dome, and exhibits a mixture of Mogul and Hindu architectural elements.

The building's plan is in an inverted T-shape, featuring a canted two-story bay window and a subsidiary entrance to the left, and an orangery attached to the rear, curving away to the left. A curving wall extends to the right from the opposite corner, leading to a tent room. The main body of the house is two stories high and shows a symmetrical facade with an enormous four-centred arch spanning the full height of the facade. Engaged square columns are adorned with sunken panelled decoration on either side of the arch. The corners have engaged octagonal turrets. The window arrangement is 3:1:3:1:3 bays; the first floor has 12-pane sashes with moulded reveals and curved hoods featuring engaged pineapple-shaped finials and foliate decoration with pendant engaged pineapple finials below the sills. Reeded quarter columns with inset and cusped shell-like hoods flank the windows either side of the central arch. Ground-floor windows have plate-glass sashes. A central double door is flanked by engaged columns with single lights on either side. A balcony above has a cast-iron railing; a central sash window/door gives access to the balcony, flanked by four-pane sashes. The roof of the main body has a central dome with a finial set back on a low rectangular tower. Single stacks with moulded caps are at each corner of the tower, connected by cast-iron railings. Pointed-arched blind arcading is below the railing, and a cast-iron railing is on the roof feature to the left of the tower. A parapet at the eaves is decorated with arcading in reversed relief, incorporating a chaja (a projecting cornice with deep brackets below). Small octagonal and square windows and lozenge decorations are in relief between the brackets. Four open-sided minarets, topped with copper domes and finials, are at the corners of the main body.

The interior is in an 18th-century classical style, with decorative cast-iron girders supporting the staircase, an early example of this type of construction in a domestic setting. Decorative cast-iron railing, comprising a trellis of semicircles, runs in front of the house; two cast-iron mounting blocks flank the entrance, matching the railing. An ashlar retaining wall, surmounted by a similar cast-iron railing with intervening ashlar piers having stepped caps and moulded copper finials, curves away from the rear left corner of the house to the tent room. The wall and railing are approximately 6 meters high.