Vauxhall Gardens: A History

Today, London’s Vauxhall district is an unprepossessing thoroughfare for cricket fans, train-spotters and spooks. For 200 years, however, it was a famous destination. In spring and summer evenings thousands swarmed to the south bank, crossing the Thames by boat, arriving in carriages via log-jammed roads or trekking on foot. Their pilgrimage was to Vauxhall Gardens, an exotic outdoor pleasure ground and a new type of public resort that had never been seen before. There, for around a shilling, the gardens’ diverse entertainments provided amusement for all – be they male or female, old or young, rich or poor. Such was its success that copycat creations soon followed. From Bath to Nashville, Tennessee, Vauxhall-inspired gardens were founded in the hope of recreating its profitable magic.  

In Vauxhall Gardens: A History, David Coke and Alan Borg recreate the original metropolitan trendsetter in meticulous detail. Pleasure gardens have long intrigued historians but, as the authors point out, theirs is the first book-length treatment of Vauxhall for over 55 years and this fact-filled, lusciously-illustrated compendium provides the ultimate guide. Although all physical traces of this unusual Arcardia have now been obliterated, Vauxhall lives on in a mountain of contemporary promotional material, prints, music scores, newspaper reports, personal accounts and eclectic ephemera from fans to ceramics. Applying ‘an updated antiquarian approach’, this legacy has been exhaustively tracked by Coke and Borg to compile their new history.

Pulling together all known references, the book offers a chronological study, starting with Vauxhall’s 17th-century origins as ‘Spring Garden’, where Pepys picked up prostitutes and Charles II courted mistresses, and finishing with its final flurry of festivities in the mid-1800s, when a leotard-clad Madam Saqui danced on high wires and daring balloonists ascended into the skies. The central focus, though, is Vauxhall’s 18th-century heyday, when the gardens were steered to stardom by an entrepreneurial Bermondsey fellmonger (dealer in hides or skins), Jonathan Tyers.

Securing the grounds’ lease in 1729, Tyers replaced strumpets with singers and nature with fine art to create a commercial wonderland. Promenades embellished with curiosities transformed the gardens into a space of theatrical illusion. Each night thousands of simultaneously lit lamps wowed spectators with their glittering illuminations. Musicians performed in a central bandstand, supper boxes (where visitors tucked into famously overpriced refreshments) showcased work by illustrious painters and a looming statute of Handel advertised Vauxhall’s status as a shrine to the arts.

Tyers was an entrepreneur with an ethic: to bring edifying cultural entertainment to a mass market, allowing anyone from princes to apprentices to experience art for an affordable ticket. It was a mission that sustained the gardens for the next century. The attractions were regularly revamped, masquerades were replaced with military re-enactments, fireworks added new luminary spectacle and acrobats joined the rota of artistes. The proprietorship changed, passing through generations of Tyers’ family until it was sold to new hands in the 1800s. Yet Vauxhall’s myth, magic and appeal persevered, keeping it firmly on the London map until 1859. Then, at last, a mournful public said ‘farewell for ever’ to the pleasure ground and toasted ‘the immortal memory of Jonathan Tyers’. This study, with its thorough research, evocative quotations and quality illustrations, seduces the reader into Vauxhall’s historic drama. The authors are clearly enamoured with their subject. And so, now, am I – let’s bring back a pleasure garden to London. Maybe in time for the Olympics?

Hannah Greig is Lecturer in British History at the University of York.