Brief History

The name Sezincote is derived from Cheisnecote – “the home of the oaks” – “la chêne” being the French for an oak tree and “cot” meaning a dwelling or shelter in Old English. This name is recorded in the Domesday Book and the description happily still applies.

The independent parish of Sezincote was small, but did have its own church near the present tennis court until this was razed to the ground by Parliament troops during the Civil War. If not easily forgiven, this action can at least be explained by the fact that the estate was then owned by firm royalists.

It was in 1795 that Colonel John Cockerell, a grandson of the diarist Samuel Pepys’s nephew, John Jackson, returned from Bengal and bought the estate from the third Earl of Guildford, possibly to be near his friend Warren Hastings at Daylesford.

John Cockerell died in 1798, leaving as his heir his youngest brother Charles, who had been with him in the service of the East India Company. Charles Cockerell (created a baronet in 1809 and Member of Parliament for Evesham) employed another brother, Samuel Pepys Cockerell, to build him a house in the Indian manner.

S.P. Cockerell was already an architect of some standing, Surveyor to the East India Company, he had been apprenticed to Sir Robert Taylor (where Nash was a pupil). He had recently built Daylesford nearby for Warren Hastings.

Sezincote remained in the Cockerell family until 1884, when James Dugdale, from Lancashire, bought it. It was his son and daughter-in-law Colonel and Mrs. Arthur Dugdale that John Betjeman used to visit from Oxford.

“Down the drive,
Under the early yellow leaves of oaks;
One lodge is Tudor, one in Indian style.
The bridge, the waterfall, the Temple Pool
And there they burst on us, the onion domes,
Chajjahs and chattris made of amber stone:
‘Home of the Oaks’, exotic Sezincote.”

From “Summoned by Bells”, by John Betjeman

Sir Cyril Kleinwort bought the estate in 1944 from Mrs. Dugdale. The house was in great need of restoration and gradually, year by year, this was undertaken by Sir Cyril and Lady Kleinwort. This process was
continued by their daughter Susanna and her husband, David Peake. Now their son and his wife, Edward and Camilla Peake, live here.