Sezincote, for another returned nabob, Warren Hastings. Cockerell was approached by Hastings in July 1788, before Cockerell's appointment as Surveyor to the Admiralty. He had built an entrance and bridge at Whiteknights, near Reading, in Berkshire, for William Byam Martin, an acquaintance of Hastings'. Cockerell received payments through 1793, amounting to £13,300, for the house, for which Hastings spent some £60,000. In the severely undecorated elevations finished in warm golden Stanway limestone, windows are simply pierced in the ashlar masonry without even moulded surrounds. The central three-bay feature of the three-storey garden front, between projecting two-storey end ranges, is a hemicircular projection crowns by a low dome, with an order of attached columns of a rich Composite order. The dome reverses curves to rise in the centre to a ball finial, a discreetly Indian feature. Cockerell's entrance front has been considerably altered. Cockerell also designed Middleton Hall, Carmarthenshire, now the home of the National Botanic Garden of Wales. Cockerell's pupils included the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), who emigrated to the United States in 1795 and worked on the White House and the United States Capitol and Benjamin Gummow. His son, Charles Robert Cockerell, who trained in his office, also went on to become a famous architect. Samuel Pepys Cockerell is named on a plaque outside the OBE Chapel at St Paul's Cathedral as 'Surveyor to the Fabric of St Paul's Cathedral' between 1811 and 1819. In 1797, Cockerell handled the sale of the Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire, estate of Rev. Abraham Blackborne of Dagenham, Essex, and St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster. Family He married Anne Whetham on 18 June 1782, and had issue eleven children (five sons and six daughters). Of them, Charles Robert Cockerell (1788–1863) became an architect; Richard Howe Cockerell (1798–1839) became a Captain RN, but died in Calcutta shortly before his projected return 1840. Richard's daughter Anna Theresa Cockerell (1836–1912) became Countess of Shrewsbury. His elder brother Colonel John Cockerell (1752–1798) bought the land at Sezincote, and left it to their younger brother Charles (1755–1837) MP between 1802 and 1837, who became Sir Charles Cockerell, 1st Bt on 25 September 1809, shortly after his 1808 remarriage to Hon. Harriet Rushout. Between 1805 and 1820, the Cockerell brothers designed and built Sezincote House together. Notes References British neoclassical architects English surveyors 1753 births 1827 deaths British East India Company civil servants 18th-century English architects 19th-century English architects Tyburnia Architects from Somerset