BETJEMAN'S VISITS TO A PIECE OF EXOTICA IN OXFORDSHIRE: SEZINCOTE

When John Betjeman was a student at Oxford University he used to visit the family home of his friend John Dugdale. The home in question, nestled in the rural idyll of the East Cotswolds, was Sezincote, a riot of Indian-inspired exotica commissioned by Charles, the brother of Colonel John Cockerell, grandson of the famous diarist Samuel Pepys, who had amassed a fortune at the East India Company. The brief Charles Cockerell set his architect brother Samuel was for a grand house in the Rajasthan Mogul style. The house must have made an impression on the Prince Regent, who visited in 1807, as he was inspired to change his plans for the Royal Pavilion in Brighton following his time there.

As for Betjeman, the house and grounds provided the inspiration for a poem forming part of the Summoned By Bells collection, covering his early life from childhood to student years. Describing his visits to the house for Sunday lunches, he waxes lyrical about the Cotswold lanes being “heavy with hawthorn scent”, while the house itself is “Indian without and coolest Greek within”. In the grounds, the lake “was made to seem a mighty river-reach”, and included “The bridge, the waterfall, the Temple Pool”. Betjeman’s friends parents were Colonel Dugdale, whose “eyes looked out towards the hills”, and Mrs Dugdale “In trailing and Edwardian-looking dress”. He concludes by declaring that “Sezincote became a second home”. Sezincote is open to visitors with the house open in the afternoon from May to September inclusive on Thursdays, Fridays and Bank Holiday Mondays, while the garden is open from January to November.

Map of the area.

Sezincote House - geograph.org.uk - 1577252. Photo by Cameraman, via Wikimedia Commons.