Sheikhpura Kothi (George Thomas's House)

Crumbling early-19th-century mansion attributed to the Irish adventurer George Thomas

The Sheikhpura Kothi is a half-ruined two-storey mansion just south of Asigarh Fort, traditionally identified as the residence of George Thomas during his short rule of Hansi at the turn of the nineteenth century. The construction — brick, lime plaster, deep verandahs and a flat roof — is typical of the late-Mughal Indo-European hybrid style of the period.

It is not a museum or formally maintained site; the building sits on private and partly encroached land, and access is informal. Worth a brief look from the outside if you are doing the Asigarh circuit, less for the architecture than for the strange historical thread of a Tipperary sailor ending up a Mughal-style nobleman on the Haryana plain.

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