Vauxhall

Sex and Entertainment

London’s Pioneering Urban Pleasure Garden

PENELOPE J. CORFIELD

Second edition, rewritten and expanded with new chapter

‘Sex and Entertainment’

History & Social Action Publications

Penelope Coreld

Penelope J. Coreld is a freelance researcher/lecturer, who lives in

Battersea and loves London life. Her special interests as a historian

focus upon Georgian and Victorian Britain, as well as upon the history

of Time. Among her publications is a DVD history of Red Battersea

(2008), and a new website devoted to London’s unknown electoral

history 1700–1850 (2012). Penelope is an Emeritus Professor at Royal

Holloway, London University, and Visiting Professor at Leicester

University’s Centre for Urban History. For details of her lectures/

publications plus monthly blog, see www.penelopejcoreld.co.uk.

Published in 2012 by History & Social Action Publications

Penelope J. Coreld has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs

and Patents Act, 19898 to be identied as the author of this work.

History & Social Action Publications

6 Oakhill Rd, London, SW16 5RG

www.historysocialaction.co.uk

[email protected]

ISBN No. 978–0–958943-9-9

Design by Martyn Partridge & Associates

Printed and bound in Great Britain by RAP/Spiderweb, Oldham, Lancs.

Contents

I Introduction 3

II Vauxhall – Inventing the Brand 7

III Vauxhall – Sex and Entertainment 15

IV Vauxhall – Coping with Competition 27

V Vauxhall – Meanings and Legacies 37

VI Vauxhall – Walking into History 42

Endnotes 43

Suggestions for Further Reading 48

Historians on Vauxhall 48

Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Novelists on Vauxhall 48

Vauxhall Web Resources 48

Illustrations (pages 22–27)

1 Adapted from A General Prospect of Vauxhall Gardens (1751):

Rights Reserved. (Also front cover)

2 William Hogarth’s Token for Life Admission to Vauxhall Gardens: from

W.W. Wroth, Tickets of Vauxhall Gardens (1898), pp. 13–14.

3 Thomas Rowlandson’s Vauxhall Gardens (1784): © Victoria & Albert

Museum.

4 Detail from Illustration 3, depicting two famous lovers, the young

Prince of Wales courting Mary ‘Perdita’ Robinson.

5 Detail from Richard Horwood’s Map of London, Westminster,

Southwark and Parts Adjoining (1799): © Guildhall Library, City of

London.

6 Sale Catalogue–Plan of Royal Gardens, Vauxhall (1841): ©

Reproduced by kind permission of Lambeth Archives Department

7 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens 2011. © DSDHA & Friends of Vauxhall

Pleasure Gardens.

Dedication

The rst edition Vauxhall and the Invention of the Urban Pleasure

Gardens was published in 2008 and was developed from two lectures

during the 2005 and 2006 Lambeth Riverside Festivals. This second

edition is dedicated to all who campaign to keep open access to

amenities in urban green places, and especially to all supporters of the

successor garden in today’s Vauxhall.

Friends of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens

Vauxhall Spring Gardens was a run down and unloved inner city green

space in North Lambeth situated on the site of the historic Vauxhall

Pleasure Gardens. The Friends of VSG were founded in 1996 to save

the park from a major redevelopment plan and to campaign for

improvements. On 16 February 2012 VSG was re-named Vauxhall

Pleasure Gardens and FVSG is now Friends of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens:

www.friendsofvauxhallpleasuregardens.org.uk.

Acknowledgements

To Sean Creighton for his continued prodding to write about Vauxhall

and his knowledge of the area’s history; to Elisabeth Stuart, archivist

and records manager of the Duchy of Cornwall for advice on the

Duchy as ground landlord of Kennington manor; to Jim Nicholson

for correcting some factual blunders in the draft of the rst edition; to

Tony Belton for his critical reading and rereadings of the text; and to

David Coke and Alan Borg for their beautifully illustrated Vauxhall

Gardens (2011) which offers fresh encouragement to delve further into

the long-term meanings and legacies of Vauxhall.

Introduction

Vauxhall Gardens – a name that conjures the pleasures of big city life.

While much has been written of the potential perils and pitfalls within

the urban experience, there is also scope for creativity and community

interactions on a mass scale. Together the tensions between dangers

and delights added to the excitement of big city life, as they still do

today.

Eighteenth-century London, which was already sprawling far beyond

the connes of the old City to become a giant metropolis, pioneered

not only many of the classic urban problems but also conrmed the

countervailing pleasures of urbanism as well.

On the positive side, one signicant bonus was the emergence of a

newly strengthened public entertainments industry, where people met

together, peacefully, for festivities and fun on a mass scale. And the

showcase venue for this was the special resort known as the ‘New

Spring Gardens at Vauxhall’, later abbreviated as the ‘Vauxhall

Gardens, or even more simply and universally as ‘Vauxhall’.

Originally opened in 1661 on the twelve-acre site of a traditional

manorial estate, the pleasure grounds were never exceptionally large.

But the luxuriant wooded plantation was already well established

on the south bank of the Thames. Mature oaks, elms and sycamores

provided leafy foliage where nightingales sang. Later, however, the site

became surrounded by new roads and buildings, making the Gardens

very much less sylvan over time. In particular, many of the mature

trees were felled in 1810/11, notably decreasing the woodland effect.

At the start the appeal of Vauxhall was specically ‘green’. It became

a huge urban pleasure garden, which became so cleverly laid out, with

walkways and long vistas through the trees, that it appeared more

spacious than it actually was. By this means it offered the illusion of

rural delights but within easy reach of the city centre.

Given that the metropolitan region was already one of the largest urban

concentrations to be found anywhere in the world, it is not surprising

that it generated a rich and diverse entertainments industry. London,

with close to a million inhabitants in 1801, was surpassed in size only

by Beijing and probably by Edo, as Tokyo was then known.

In eighteenth-century Britain not only did the metropolis house

immense numbers of people, it also attracted numerous visitors

from Britain and overseas, who came to town both for business and

sociability. This continuous ow of population provided the context for

the success of London’s many pleasure gardens. These were relatively

simple to establish, with a range of facilities according to each patron’s

initiative. The customers thronged not only to enjoy the entertainments

but also to participate in these informal gatherings of people, where

part of the fun was – proverbially–‘to see and be seen’.

Encouraged by consumer demand within the growing metropolis, at

least 65 pleasure gardens are known to have existed at various times in

eighteenth-century London; and, in reality there were probably many

more.

A characteristic venue was a eld or plot of green attached to

a tavern. Some were traditional sites, perhaps situated by a mineral

spring that had a reputation for providing health cures. Others were

new commercial ventures in populous locations.

One enterprising example was the Adam & Eve tea gardens, situated

on the busy Tottenham Court Road leading from central London

towards Hampstead, then a semi-rural suburb. The location was just

outside the built-up area but within easy access for citizens in search

of refreshment. A tavern was opened there by 1718 and soon after were

added tea gardens, a skittle alley, and a small menagerie with a monkey,

parrots, a heron, wildfowl, and goldsh in an ornamental pool.

The

venture had a modest success for some decades. Yet the business was

unable to resist the northwards march of London housing. Much of the

site was sold for development and, although the old name was retained

by a public house for some years, eventually that too disappeared.

As the fate of the Adam & Eve indicates, success in the provision of urban

pleasure gardens was by no means guaranteed to last. Not only was there

strong competition from rival entertainment venues but there were also

urgent competing demands for land use as the metropolis expanded.

For those studying Vauxhall three related questions come to mind.

Firstly, how did these pleasure gardens on London’s south bank become

established as the ‘brand leader’ among so many rival venues?

A second question takes a longer term view, continuing until the eventual

closure of Vauxhall in 1859. How did this brand leader maintain its

prominence for such a long span of years even while central London’s

south bank was becoming increasingly industrialised?

Within the uidity of this metropolitan transformation, other general

themes arise. Some historians see Vauxhall’s success as symbolising

a vaguely dened ‘Modernity’. But a third question demands a more

precise answer than that. What does the story of Vauxhall Gardens

mean in terms of both history and its long-term legacy? For answers,

please read on …

Vauxhall – Inventing the Brand

A major reason for Vauxhall’s appeal lay in the bountiful provision

of entertainments, supplemented by the prompt service of food and

ample refreshments. While long keeping their sylvan appearance,

the Gardens developed an efcient commercial infrastructure that

provided amenities for the crowds who promenaded under the trees.

After the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 smart society

began to ock to London not only for business but also for pleasure.

Already responding to this burgeoning market, Vauxhall’s Spring

Gardens acquired in the 1660s a bowling green, simple booths

where food and drink were available, and a troupe of musicians who

serenaded the visitors.

Samuel Pepys, the diarist, was an early acionado. His account in

May 1662 recorded one of his typical visits: he took a boat along the

Thames for an open-air evening at Vauxhall, accompanied by his wife,

two maidservants, and a house-boy. Their outing was a great success.

Pepys noted pleasantly that ‘the boy creeps through the hedge and

gather[s] abundance of roses’. The entire party enjoyed ‘cakes and

powdered beef and ale’, which were staple English refreshments of his

era. ‘And so home again by water, with much pleasure’.

The programme for al fresco success was relatively simple to institute;

and it worked well, especially in the summer months in England, with

their generally warmer weather and infallibly long hours of daylight.

Food, drink, and fashionable company provided the human interest,

while the river and the trees provided a rural ambience without the need

for protracted travel. ‘Equal here the Pleasures ravish/ Of the Court,

and of the eld’, claimed a 1730s song, serenading The Pleasures of

Ye Spring Gardens.

At the summer concerts which quickly became a

Vauxhall speciality, such ‘pufng’ verses were proudly featured.

It took much more than this agreeable combination of facilities,

however, to propel the Gardens to the forefront of fame. That surge

to prominence came in June 1732, with an inspired invention from a

new manager. He was Jonathan Tyers, a Londoner of middling social

standing who rst leased the site from the Duchy of Cornwall in 1728

and, having greatly developed the business, eventually purchased the

grounds outright.

Tyers was a brilliant impresario.

Not only did he know his own

business, which was to act as an unofcial Master of Ceremonies,

meeting and greeting the visiting crowds, but he quickly saw the need

for a substantial redesign of the Gardens, to elevate Vauxhall above

its competitors as the key venue for summer evening entertainments.

Retaining the wooded characteristics of the site, with its established

elms and sycamores, the new plan added sophistication to the greenery,

as well as considerably improved facilities to cater for large numbers

without losing the sylvan atmosphere. Long gravel walks were laid

out, criss-crossing the site. And the sight-lines were enhanced by an

eye-catching array of special features. There were obelisks, grand

ornamental arches, painted scenery on canvas–including a celebrated

trompe l’oeuil showing mock ruins–a Moorish tower, a ‘pavilion of

concord’, a hermit’s cave, and a water-mill with its own waterfall.

Homage to the arts was indicated by two prominent statues, one

depicting Handel, the Anglicised German who was England’s new

musical hero, and the other John Milton, England’s own great epic

poet. Vauxhall also showed that it was au courant with the latest literary

sensation in 1740, by displaying paintings of would-be seduction

scenes from Richardson’s Pamela.

Thousands of oil-lamps were hung from the trees to create a glittering

effect. The supplier was a local manufacturer named Richard Dawson,

who was rewarded by a season ticket for the Gardens. With the aid

of an ingenious system of ax threads, a team of workers managed

to light all the lamps simultaneously at nightfall.

The sudden blaze

was thrilling. One of the many poets who wrote in praise of Vauxhall

enthused about the sparkling moment of ‘lamp-rise’ with the comment

that:

Adam scarce was more inchanted

When he saw the sun rst rise –

Who precisely redesigned the visual effects for the grand reopening

with a special Ridotto, or masked ball, in June 1732 is unknown. One

possibility is that the young Hogarth, who took summer lodgings in

nearby Lambeth, had a hand in encouraging the overall plans. He

is known to have provided some assistance, including presenting

copies of his paintings to decorate the pavilions.

Clearly, the person

who redesigned the eighteenth-century Gardens had a good eye for

perspective. The arches between the trees provided a majestic framing.

And the outer walks were initially bounded only by a sunken ditch

or haha, so that the neighbouring elds were incorporated into the

overall effect as ‘borrowed’ landscape. The effect is depicted in the

General Prospect of Vaux Hall Gardens (1751). [ILLUS/1] Behind

the house that contained the ticket-ofce, there are densely packed

trees stretching into the distance, interspersed with long walkways and

archways, so that the walkers could saunter into a magical garden.

The impresario Jonathan Tyers knew that his guests, after strolling in his

‘enchanted grove’, would expect a similarly spectacular environment

for the evening entertainments. An orchestra lodged in its special

pavilion, rebuilt grandly in ‘Gothic’ style in 1757, provided music,

while refreshments – by this time including the notorious Vauxhall

rum punch–were served in an array of elegant supper-booths, each

seating six or eight persons.

A magnicent Rotunda was added in 1743 to allow the company to

meet under cover, in the event of rainy evenings. This building was

lavishly decorated with plaster-of-Paris ornamentation by a London

carpenter named Maidman, who later embellished the ‘grand Gothic

orchestra’. His efforts indicated how Tyers drew upon contributions

from the great metropolitan reservoir of skilled craftsmen.

‘The

whole place is a realisation of Elysium’, gasped one onlooker, dazzled

by the ‘heavenly’ special effects.

Another popular set-piece was introduced in 1755. This took the form

of a water scene with a mill and a dramatic cascade (its piping hidden

in a high hedge), which owed every evening from nine to nine-fteen.

A special bell was rung to summon the admiring visitors.

Formidable programmes of entertainment were organised to draw the

crowds. Over time, the Gardens hosted concerts, song recitals, dances,

masked balls, rework displays, ballets, acrobatic entertainments,

pantomimes, naval fetes, balloon displays, races, horse shows, clowns,

archery displays, all manner of exhibitions, ower-shows, and even

lion-taming (in the early 1840s), as well as many special gala evenings.

Music was, above all, one of Vauxhall’s most signicant trump cards.

Its concerts welded a wide range of compositions from both the popular

and what later became the ‘classical’ repertoire, to provide eclectic

and crowd-pleasing programmes. Indeed, between them the London

pleasure gardens functioned as the ‘nurseries of English song’,

keeping alive old popular favourites and simultaneously adding new

items to the repertoire. As the premier concert ground, Vauxhall’s

regular summer seasons of music were in the vanguard of the process.

Special events drew astonishing crowds. Thousands crammed into the

Gardens at eleven in the morning on 21 April 1749 to hear a public

rehearsal of Handel’s scintillating Fireworks Music, days before its rst

ofcial performance. There were long tail-backs of coaches queuing

for admission. This attendance was even more notable in that the entry

charge on this occasion was more than doubled, to two shillings and

sixpence. Initially Handel was unhappy about previewing his new

composition. However, he was pressurised to agree because, in return,

Jonathan Tyers provided an array of Vauxhall lamps plus thirty lamp-

lighters to illuminate the ofcial premiere in Green Park six days later.

Musicians who could please audiences in the testing al fresco

environment became favourites with the public as well as in court

and aristocratic circles. The London-born Thomas Arne was the most

famous English composer associated with Vauxhall. He built up its

musical programme and his song Rule Britannia (1740) became a

perennial concert favourite.

Women were also stars in the Vauxhall

galaxy. Arne’s rst wife Cecilia was a celebrated vocalist. And another

popular singer in the 1790s was Miss Leary, described enticingly as

‘the siren of Vauxhall’.

Bolstered with a roster of crowd-pleasing performers, the Gardens

functioned at once as an arena for elite concerts and simultaneously as

a clear forerunner of the popular Victorian music halls. This double-

sided aspect of Vauxhall’s musical role cannot be stressed too strongly:

it was poised on the high plateau before the parting of the ways

between ‘classical’ and popular music. Of course the gap has never

been absolute. But in the eighteenth century, there was no breach.

Thus the composer Handel wrote a special Hornpipe for Vauxhall in

1740; and his Dead March from Saul was a standard in the Gardens’

repertoire.

The venue moreover showcased not only the musicians but also the

music. Thus song-sheets were sold to promote the latest favourites in

the repertoire with the enticing legend: ‘Sung at VAUXHALL.

The

name was enough on its own to add selling power. Hence it appeared

in the titles of many eighteenth-century songbooks. And late in

Vauxhall’s history, its aptly named musical director J.W. Sharp, himself

a successful performer at the Gardens, felt encouraged to produce his

Vauxhall Comic Song Book, with separate editions in 1847 and 1848.

Such a widely varied repertoire of vocal and orchestral music, both

old and new, was very hard for other places to copy. The supply of

successful musicians was not limitless. Consequently, the cost of

engaging orchestras and singers on the Vauxhall scale, even if only for

a restricted summer season, was well beyond the reach of the smaller

pleasure gardens.

Inspired entrepreneurship did much to create a framework for success.

Yet the context had to be right to attract the crowds and then to keep

attracting them. One necessary element was good communications.

Vauxhall was near enough to the growing metropolis to be reached

without too much difculty. Initially, river barges and rowing-boats

brought many customers – like Pepys and his household–along the

Thames to Vauxhall Steps, where the jostle was sometimes alarming

as the pushing crowds all tried to jump onto dry land simultaneously.

After 1750 many more visitors arrived by coach or on foot across the

newly opened Westminster Bridge and then by road along the south

bank of the winding river. The journey from the heart of the metropolis

was not far. When events were exceptionally popular, however, the

queue of equipages sometimes stretched back for long distances.

Another option, for those unworried about social style, was to arrive

on foot. And in the early days some impecunious revellers entered the

Gardens simply by climbing the open banks of the surrounding haha.

Keeping an ambience of accessibility without losing social cachet was

a difcult balancing act. An important part of Vauxhall’s appeal was

its relative openness. It was not a location reserved for any one social

group, nor for any one age-group, come to that. The element of social

mixing was facilitated as relaxed crowds strolled in an ornamental

open-air environment, whereas in their ordinary domestic lives the

social conventions were much more constraining.

Signicantly, domestic servants in livery were explicitly banned from

Vauxhall’s Walks,

so that aristocratic grandees were not surrounded

by a formal retinue of personal attendants but paraded informally

with the rest of the company. The presence of princes and other social

leaders attracted the urban crowds. They in turn furnished the buzz and

animation, as they came to rub shoulders with the great and famous.

Together the fashionable and the unfashionable collectively generated

the substantial custom that made Vauxhall’s lavish entertainments

commercially viable.

Other competitor pleasure gardens in London could not match

that combination. Some places, like the Adam & Eve, attracted an

essentially local clientele. Only one other challenged the fame of

Vauxhall. The pioneering south-bank Gardens had a north-bank rival

in the form of Ranelagh, which was established further west along the

river at Chelsea in 1742. This venue was much more socially exclusive

than Vauxhall. It offered a cultivated alternative to elite customers,

when they wanted to avoid the press of the crowds.

But Ranelagh

deliberately cultivated a different market niche. It did not seek to

emulate the popular animation and show-business variety of Vauxhall.

The south-bank site remained the brand leader.

Following the 1732 redesign of the Vauxhall Gardens, the entrance

ticket for a single visit was set at the sum of one shilling; and, except

for special events, it remained pegged at that level for many years,

until price ination in 1792 led to its rst increase. This tariff was no

barrier to the rich or middling sort, although it was enough to exclude

the very poor.

Return custom was particularly encouraged by selling season tickets, in

the form of engraved silver medallions. Each one admitted two people,

with the subscriber’s name etched on the reverse. These medallions

were attractively produced, making them desirable objects to acquire.

No less an artist than William Hogarth provided skilful graphic designs

for the very earliest season tickets.

His overall contribution to ‘styling’

Vauxhall was acknowledged by the award of a special medallion,

granting him free access to the Gardens for life. Its design showed two

graceful goddesses in owing drapery, representing ‘Virtue’ (Virtus)

hand-in-hand with ‘Pleasure’ (Voluptas). [ILLUS/2] This combined

imagery symbolised the ideal Vauxhall brand image.

Organisational problems, however, became apparent when season-

ticket holders either lost or loaned their tokens. Sundry persons of

‘evil repute’ were found to have gained admission. ‘Such will not be

permitted to come in on any consideration whatsoever’, announced the

Vauxhall management, with thunderous dignity. But it proved hard to

keep strict control.

Episodes like these indicated that there was a covert battle waged

by the London crowds who were pressing to gain admission. Their

enthusiasm was a clear sign of the Gardens’ great popularity. Hence the

management’s stern proclamations against ‘low’ characters indicated

that the social mix was always more eclectic than the theoretical

pricing policy prescribed.

‘There was a prodigious deal of good company present’, it was reported

in 1737.

Yet alongside the princes and aristocrats, who brought

fashionable society to Vauxhall, there were always plentiful numbers

of London traders and shopkeepers, not to mention humbler citizens

such as the gin-drinking ‘bunters’ (female rag-pickers) depicted in one

satirical print. A juxtaposition of high and low was an important part

of Vauxhall’s legendary appeal. Needless to say, the extent of genuine

social mixing should not be exaggerated. Vauxhall neither sought

nor managed to subvert class differences in any permanent way. Its

promise was not one of permanent equality but of temporary common

ground, with a shared conviviality. [ILLUS/3]

Particularly enticing was the fame of Vauxhall as a meeting place for

young men and women. One of the long-standing roles of the town

was to provide occasions for the classic encounter of ‘boy meets girl’.

When the couple in question were scandalous socially and amorously,

the excitement was heightened. In reality, the rowdy young Prince

of Wales (later George IV) did not conduct much of his liaison with

the actor Mary ‘Perdita’ Robinson in public places. But the fact that

Rowlandson’s iconic 1784 watercolour of Vauxhall included this

couple prominently, next to Robinson’s grimacing and cuckolded

husband, showed how the Gardens gained a reputation as a showcase

for amorous drama. [ILLUS/4]

With its theoretically controlled entry and formalised entertainments,

Vauxhall was not a disorderly or licentious gathering. It was a

respectable venue, although not as ‘rened’ as Ranelagh which was

a favoured location for aristocratic courtship. In its own distinctive

style, Vauxhall Gardens provided a relaxed and sensually decorated

meeting-place where men and women, young and old, from upper and

middling backgrounds, assembled in public together to promenade in

their nery, while enjoying the light and warmth of the long summer

evenings.

Eventually the real-life nightingales that once delighted Samuel

Pepys disappeared from the woodland that had turned into a pleasure

park. The mid-eighteenth-century lovers would hear only the mufed

whispers of other couples in the dark–and the oating tunes, chatter,

and laughter coming from the nearby lighted areas. Vauxhall’s

combination of vivacious public spaces and semi-private darkness

gave it an invaluable ‘brand’ image of sensuous promise.

III

Vauxhall – Sex and Entertainment

Vauxhall’s reputation for sexual glamour merits special attention,

because it throws light on the Gardens’ mixed appeal to basic instincts

as well as to sophisticated pleasures. Most of the contemporary

commentators were coy about the details. But it is still possible to

glean some information on what exactly went on in the famous (or

infamous) Dark Walks.

Before Vauxhall became an enclosed garden, the wooded site had

already in the later seventeenth century become a place visited by

courting couples. In crowded towns, lovers need tranquil places to

visit and enjoy each other’s company. And, in particular, young adults

who are not yet heads of their own households seek secluded places

for courtship or more.

A degree of privacy was much valued, especially in the days when

bedrooms and beds were often shared – and not just by married couples.

The history of sleeping arrangements is surprisingly understudied. But

in these times children in poor and even ‘middling’ households often

co-slept in shared beds and/or shared bedrooms. Family rooms might

also be shared by living-in servants. Many used light truckle beds,

which were stored away during the day-time.

For people living in such crowded circumstances places to meet and places

for sexual encounters, whether introductory or more advanced, were much

appreciated. In a mass society, the opportunities multiplied. Accordingly,

metropolitan London in the eighteenth century contained many different

meeting-places, formal and informal, which catered for a range of tastes.

Sexual variety was part of the attraction of metropolitan life. Homosexual

men, for example, gathered in taverns known as ‘molly-houses’; or in

known outdoor locations like sections of St James’s Park, Lincoln’s Inn

Fields, Moorelds, and Covent Garden.

Heterosexual encounters were

associated with some of the more rafsh special events, like the ‘three

days’ fever’ of festivities each Easter at Greenwich Fair. This popular

gathering was not for the prudish. A mythology in song and sayings

accordingly warned incautious female revellers at Greenwich that they

would reap the cost of their sexual abandon nine months later.

Alongside intermittent events like fairs and markets, there were also

continuous possibilities in open spaces. Gardens, parks, common lands

and river-banks were all well-known places for al fresco assignation.

It was in that context that the wooded groves of Vauxhall had already

become a prime courtship site for seventeenth-century Londoners. In

that guise, it had already become sufciently well known to attract

peeping-toms and other ‘rogues’.

The pleasures promised by Vauxhall, however, outweighed the

inconveniences. Not only citizens but also newcomers to the metropolis

knew of its reputation as a place to nd sexual companions.

One self-documented case was that of the Virginian planter William

Byrd, then a forty-four year old widower. During a prolonged stay in

London, he often toured through different parks and gardens. In June

1718, he noted in his private diary the not untypical outcome of a trip

to Vauxhall with a male friend:

We went to Spring Gardens where we picked up two women and

carried them into the arbour … and about 10 o’clock we carried

them to the bagnio [commercial bath-house], where we bathed and

lay with them all night and I rogered mine twice and slept pretty

well, but neglected my prayers.

Vauxhall’s sexy reputation was commercially valuable to Jonathan

Tyers, as he redeveloped the site in the 1730s. He was, after all, no

clergyman. It did not matter to him if people left off their prayers.

But he did want to attract the custom of the young and sexually

adventurous, without letting the venue become too sleazy. Too much

notoriety would deter too many fashionable ladies and respectable

families.

The redesign of the Gardens under Jonathan Tyers was thus nely

judged. About half the site was allowed to remain wooded. While

the entertainment section was brilliantly lit, the Dark Walks were

left in the dark. People could thus promenade under the trees in the

summer gloaming. They could hear voices and music from nearby, so

they were not completely isolated. But they had a piquant element of

privacy. The result was a suggestive social liberty that added a special

excitement to the Gardens, with a hint of erotic licence but without

teetering over the brink.

In the early days groups of musicians were deployed to serenade the

lovers from hidden positions behind a number of ‘Musical Bushes’.

However, this ingenious idea proved difcult to sustain. ‘The damp

of the earth was found to be prejudicial to the instruments’, it was

reported prosaically.

Within a few years the musicians were removed

into the concert stands.

The Dark Walks were left in peace. One much less than romantic

consequence was that some visitors (both men and women) relieved

themselves under the trees, although latrines were provided within

the Vauxhall site.

But such lavatorial details were too normal in

eighteenth-century London to provoke much comment. The mystique

of the Walks survived.

Unmarried and courting couples could promenade there without the

woman automatically losing her reputation. Contemporary accounts,

however, indicate that unaccompanied young women often strolled in

groups, seeking safety in numbers. By the later eighteenth century,

Vauxhall’s reputation for attracting prostitutes meant that respectable

ladies had to stay on their guard.

When the heroine of Fanny Burney’s novel Evelina (published to

acclaim in 1778) gets lost among the ‘dark alleys’, she is grabbed by

disrespectful men who salute her as a pretty ‘actress’ and assume that

she is fair game for sexual romping. She is saved by a gentlemanly

admirer but he is then emboldened to make improper advances in his

turn.

He gasps:

By Heaven, you distract me, … why do I see you here? … these

dark walks! – no party! – no companion! – by all that’s good, I can

scarce believe my senses.

Evelina’s virtue survives the ordeal. But this titillating scene constituted

a literary warning that the normal social controls were relaxed within

the Dark Walks. Romping could easily turn into sexual harassment.

Already by the later 1750s there were allegations of ‘dangerous

terrors’, which produced shouts and screams from the Dark Walks.

There were calls for greater restraint. As a result in 1764 a modest

element of lighting was introduced into the main Lover’s Walk, which

ran parallel to Kennington Lane.

Given the crowds not far away and the risk of peeping toms, there was

as much or more kissing and petting than there was full intercourse.

Samuel Pepys, for example, recorded in his secret diary for April 1668

a visit to Vauxhall with a female actor. They drank together, while he

kissed her and touched her body ‘all over’ but he ‘did not offer algo

mas [anything more]’.

He was, however, unusual in keeping a secret

diary on such intimate matters, so it is hard to assess his typicality or

otherwise.

Vauxhall’s reputation for accommodating lovers provided an

atmospheric titillation for the general company, who could enjoy the

febrile mood without loss of reputation. A good parallel was found

in Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela, which had a runaway success

upon rst publication in 1740. It insinuated the young master’s

unmistakeable sexual arousal as he tried to seduce his mother’s maid,

until her affectionate resistance was eventually rewarded by marriage.

Readers could follow the love play, without condoning impropriety. So

it was similarly appropriate that Vauxhall visitors could enjoy viewing

two paintings of scenes from Pamela, as already noted.

Given the perennial human interest in sexual matters, the Tyers’

formula entailed the successful ‘incorporation’ of sexuality into the

Gardens’ appeal. Or another way of describing the Vauxhall effect

would be the sexualisation or eroticisation of public entertainment.

Such a process risked turning a basic human need and pleasure into a

packaged commodity. Yet the arrangements at Vauxhall fell well short

of the full commodication or commercialisation of sex. There were

women of the utmost social respectability at the Gardens, alongside the

more rakish ‘demi-reps’, who were often invited by male companions

as escorts to provide good company. In August 1777 a jovial account

came from the pen of the African-Briton Ignatius Sancho, born on

a slave ship but by this date a Westminster tradesman. He visited

Vauxhall with ‘some honest girls who were treated with expenses for a

Vauxhall evening’. The event was a great success: ‘Fine evening – ne

place – good songs – much company – and good music … Heaven and

Earth!–how happy, how delighted were the girls!’

Female prostitutes were also known to congregate there, as they

clustered at many other entertainment hubs, like Covent Garden.

According to a shocked visitor to Vauxhall in the 1780s, there were

many ‘loose women’ who regularly accosted the male revellers,

boldly demanding drinks.

In fact, there are no statistics that prove

or disprove such claims. But it was probably the case that, over time,

Vauxhall did gain increasing number of prostitutes, given that its aura

of sexual dalliance tended also to attract men in search of amorous

possibilities.

But, while the Gardens provided informal venues for assignations and

encounters, much sexual delivery took place elsewhere. One reason

was that Jonathan Tyers employed discreet watchmen to police the

Dark Walks. For commercial motives already explained, he wanted

to avoid scaring his respectable visitors. And another reason was the

organised nature of prostitution itself, which collectively amounted to

big business. Whilst the poorest street-walkers did have sex al fresco

in London’s streets and parks, many prostitutes took clients back to

privately rented rooms in ale-houses or bawdy-houses (as opposed to

large brothels).

Hence many of the ‘women of the town’, who had

sufcient time, money and social style to get into Vauxhall, would

have their own places to take their clients. That applied particularly

to the high-class courtesans, who were sufciently well dressed to

be confused with women of fashion. Some courtesans were style-

setters, whose public parade at Vauxhall enhanced their lovers’ private

pleasures.

The reality of the pick-up gambit by cheerily demanding a drink

from strangers was corroborated in a recorded exchange between two

witnesses during an Old Bailey criminal case in 1745:

Mr Rondeau: I knew Mrs. Moore twenty years ago … She walked

in Spring Gardens at Vauxhall, and picked up men

there.

Mrs Moore: Pray, did you pick me up, or did I pick you up?

Mr Rondeau: She asked almost everyone to give her a glass of

wine.

Mrs Moore: You know Vauxhall is a very pleasant place; I know

you very well, for I remember you picked me up

there once.

Their frank and feisty words conrmed the sexy reputation of

Vauxhall. Hence, as the venue developed, it appealed simultaneously

to two strong strands in eighteenth-century culture: the ‘polite’ and the

‘bawdy’. While Vauxhall displayed classical statues and motifs, and

was visited by wits and savants, its amorous image could range from

the dreamy to the earthy. No less a poet than John Keats was inspired

by the romantic possibilities of this venue for young lovers. His sonnet

‘To a Lady seen for some Few Moments at Vauxhall’

was by no

means his best; but it caught a yearning response to eeing beauty,

tantalisingly glimpsed among the trees.

This double appeal was made to those visitors who enjoyed

pornography, scatological cartoons, and unsentimental comic literature

(a genre whose popularity historians have recently stressed),

as well

as to those visitors who loved classical learning, etiquette books, and

sentimental literature – and to all those who participated in polite and

impolite cultures simultaneously.

Everyone could nd something to praise – or indeed to blame. Not

only was Vauxhall inventing the myth and reality of the urban pleasure

garden but it also featured as the epitome of immorality and debauchery

for all who thundered against the vices of the age.

Within the history of sexuality Vauxhall’s eighteenth-century role and

reputation corresponded with a period of relative permissiveness. The

relaxation of church controls over personal behaviour, especially after

the 1689 Act of Toleration, encouraged a greater freedom of action and,

especially, a much franker public display. Advocates of sexual freedom

drew upon Enlightenment ideas of personal choice and applied them

within an impersonal urban environment – a juncture of theory-and-

practice that has been dubbed the ‘origins of sex’.

Needless to say

that terminology should not be taken as a literal description. Sex is as

old as the species. And sexual behaviour and the public expression of

sexual mores (which are not the same phenomena) do not generally

display single turning points. Changes are often slow and cumulative.

In eighteenth-century England, and especially in its towns, publicly-

sanctioned attitudes were certainly different from those obtaining in

the Puritan days of Oliver Cromwell. Vauxhall’s sexual electricity was

a amboyant sign of the times. Far from all onlookers were amused.

For example, the philosopher David Hume deplored ‘that torrent of

vice, profaneness, and immorality, by which the age is so unhappily

distinguished.’

Similarly, a much lesser literary gure, Thomas Amory, joined the ranks

of the malcontents. Puritan sermons went unread, he complained in

1756, while people relaxed self-indulgently ‘in these days of pleasure,

in this age of Vauxhalls and Ranelaghs’. But, since Amory also referred

to people travelling to the pleasure gardens in ‘coaches full of love and

laughter’, his account was hardly devised to discourage visitors.

The

eroticisation of leisure was in full swing.

It is worth noting, however, that over time the pendulum of fashion

and public sexual mores began to change once more. Too much licence

was alarming to the respectable Victorian middle class. In the case of

Vauxhall its wooded area was also physically on the retreat. More and

more space was given over to mass entertainments, as has already been

noted. The economic need to pack in the crowds had taken precedence.

Lovers had to nd other more discreet places to go. The critics of

vice and immorality, alarmed at the outing of traditional morality,

fought back. By the 1830s there was increasing middle-class support

for public respectability. Private behaviour did not necessarily change.

Yet ‘Victorianism’ entailed a greater emphasis upon public decorum.

There were and are swings and counter-swings in what is considered

as socially acceptable as well as legally permissible.

Associating sex with entertainment, however, has never gone away.

For example, the Victorian music halls, with their suggestive songs

and dances, were very much in the saucy spirit of Vauxhall, albeit

indoors out of the rain. The south London Gardens cannot be credited

for inventing the sexualisation and eroticisation of popular culture.

Clearly, not everything that followed Vauxhall was consciously

copying its legend. Inuences are often indirect and hard to trace, as

well as direct.

Nonetheless, whenever sexual allure is used to glamorise and titillate

any form of popular entertainment (as now in TV game shows, for

example), it can at least be said that in terms of capitalising upon

sexual electricity, Vauxhall Gardens had got there rst. Moreover, its

excitements in the eighteenth century were enacted as well as implied.

1 Vauxhall Gardens as transformed by Jonathan Tyers mingled the woodland

effect with arched walkways and entertainments among the trees.

2 An early admission token,

depicting Vauxhall’s

ideal of Virtue (Virtus)

and Pleasure (Voluptas)

walking together hand-

in-hand.

3 Thomas Rowlandson’s iconic watercolour (1784) caught Vauxhall’s gaiety,

glamour, bustle, and variegated entertainments.

4 ‘Amorous Vauxhall’

is incorporated into

Rowlandson’s watercolour

(detail) - with two real-life

lovers, the young Prince of

Wales and the fashionable

actor Mary ‘Perdita’

Robinson.

5 In 1799 Richard Horwood’s Map of London found Vauxhall on the cusp, with the

still-wooded Gardens becoming surrounded by the industrial south bank.

6 Vauxhall’s site plan in 1841 shows how the wooded area had been reduced to

create space for mass displays, while still leaving some of the old features.

7 Vauxhall’s Pleasure (formerly Spring) Gardens are now restored as a small

parkland memory-marker, tucked behind the railway and riverfront developments

on the Thames.

Vauxhall – Coping with Competition

Becoming Britain’s premier pleasure garden was a pioneering

achievement. By the later eighteenth century copycat venues were

being constructed in The Hague, Antwerp, and Dublin, although these

rival pleasure-parks were but pale shadows of the original. In pre-

revolutionary Paris there were at least ten rival ‘Wauxhalls’, as the

French termed them. One, founded in 1785, offered a concert pavilion

and a leafy garden, on a site that is today commemorated by a wall-

plaque in the busy boulevard de Magenta, leading prosaically to the

gare du nord.

Each venue developed its own brand of entertainment, with regular

rework displays being a popular speciality that were imported into

England from France in the later 1790s.

The element of copying

between the different Gardens was a tribute to the emergence of

an internationally competitive urban business. Vauxhall, however,

remained the pioneering prototype, as the loaning of its name into

other languages indicated.

Public promotion as well as sustained effort behind the scenes was

needed to maintain its market leadership. The fate of Ranelagh, which

was closed for good in 1803, shows that fashionable success in one era

would not necessarily translate into survival in another. And Vauxhall

faced competition not only from rival Gardens in London and Paris but

from other amenities in many provincial capitals as well.

Patterns of leisure were also beginning to change, especially with

the growth of specialist holiday resorts. In the eighteenth century, for

example, people travelled to the fast expanding spa towns, like Bath

or Tunbridge Wells, for summer entertainment as well as for a health

‘cure’.

Accordingly Vauxhall’s owners worked hard, continually re-inventing

their brand to attract custom and to encourage return visits. Their

programmes of music were notably eclectic, with new sensations

and productions every season. In 1780, an ingenious division of the

orchestra and singers allowed for a clever effect. The visible musicians

sang a new song: ‘They say there is an echo here’, while another choir,

concealed in the nearby shrubbery, answered with a perfect copy.

This coup de theatre was much admired.

Crowds under the trees also joined in the dancing, which was ‘executed

with jumping, thumping and laughter’, as Thackeray later recalled

affectionately. And a popular addition to the ritual was invented in

1783. At the end of the concert, the orchestra, with its band of drums

and fe, perambulated the entire Gardens, with the crowds following

in pied-piper merriment. This grand nale was so successful that it was

regularly incorporated into the programme, giving all comers a chance

to participate spontaneously in the show.

Gradually over time, however, concert audiences were tending to

become more specialised in their demands. By the nineteenth century

the musical world in particular was becoming more segmented.

Ultra-

fashionable concerts of what became the classical music repertoire

were no longer held at Vauxhall. Instead its programmes concentrated

increasingly upon dance music played by military bands and upon

crowd-pleasing songs.

Thus, as musical London developed an immense array of places where

music was performed, the role of Vauxhall became more specialised.

But demand was ever buoyant. Music always remained part of

Vauxhall’s allure.

Throughout all these changes, the management strove to keep the

crowds coming in sufcient numbers to make the business protable

during the restricted summer season from April to September (initially

excluding Sundays), but without driving away the fashionable society

whose presence attracted the crowds in the rst place. Vauxhall’s

continuing aim was to be neither too rened nor too notorious.

Jonathan Tyers and the members of his family, who followed him as

owners of Vauxhall, kept a close eye on the business. They employed

a large staff to provide food, drink, and entertainments, as well as to

tend the grounds and lamps.

The workforce was organised behind-

the-scenes with great efciency. Specic waiters were responsible

for numbered tables. Standard lists of prices were publicly displayed.

And, as a result, visitors were served promptly, despite the throng.

The rank-and-le employees were all well trained in discretion.

They told no tales of scandal and secrets. Instead, they went entirely

unnoticed, except upon the rarest of occasions–such as in July 1749

when, in apparently unrelated incidents, not one but two members

of staff (the head cook and a waiter) drowned in the Thames near

Vauxhall.

In general, however, it was the star visitors who made the

news, along with the Masters of Ceremonies, who hosted the revels.

Learning from the success of Jonathan Tyers, his son Tom Tyers

continued to play the same role from 1771–85. He was a convivial

gure, who ‘ran about the world with a pleasant carelessness, amusing

everybody by his desultory conversation’, wrote James Boswell

approvingly in 1778.

Attracted by the ties of companionship, leading

gures in London’s literary world were encouraged to visit and revisit

the Gardens. Many novelists of the era thus mentioned Vauxhall as a

symbol of metropolitan pleasures, whether their ctional characters

enjoyed the bustle or complained at the crowds.

From 1797 the idiosyncratic Charles Simpson was engaged as Master

of Ceremonies. He remained in post for over thirty-six years, retiring

only just before his death in 1833. His long career provided continuity,

even after the Tyers family relinquished their dynastic control of the

Gardens in 1822. Moreover, Simpson made himself into a Vauxhall

talking-point. He dressed elaborately as a veteran dandy in knee-

breeches, brandished a special silver-headed cane, and addressed

visitors in a richly parodic style of traditional courtesy.

His death

was marked by the special illumination of a forty-ve foot efgy in

coloured lights, lling the sky with his unmistakeable silhouette.

Even before the Tyers family relinquished their role, however, there

were some signs that Vauxhall risked becoming a victim of its own

success. Pickpockets regularly trawled snuff-boxes, watches, purses,

and ladies’ shawls – a characteristic hazard of life among the urban

crowds.

Complaints were also voiced from time to time that the Gardens

encouraged rowdyism, especially among the convivial young men

who drank too deeply of Vauxhall’s heady rum punch. In Thackeray’s

novel Vanity Fair, that was the fate of Jos Sedley, whose meditated

proposal to Becky Sharp got lost between his absurd tipsiness under

the Vauxhall bright lights and his dire hangover next morning.

In real life the management worked hard at keeping order amidst the

merriment. One instance of that occurred in 1763. To deter the wilder

gate-crashers the open ditch or haha was replaced with a row of iron

railings. In annoyed response a group of fty or so young ‘rakes’

promptly threw down the new fence and noisily joined the celebrations.

But the railings were eventually restored. Order was conrmed. Yet it

was done at the cost of losing the pleasant vista across the nearby elds

which contributed to the Gardens’ original charm. Regulating the

crowds seeking admission had to take priority over visual amenities.

Nonetheless, it was a massive tribute to the Gardens’ prestige that

Vauxhall managed to retain its piquant mixture of popular and

fashionable success for as long as it did. On the busiest summer nights

the numbers in attendance ran into the thousands; and the revels often

continued into the early hours. One famous gathering occurred on 29

May 1786, which was decreed for publicity purposes to be the fty-

year Jubilee of the Gardens. A special Ridotto was held, mimicking the

grand masked festival of that name which launched Jonathan Tyers’

new regime in June 1732.

Some sarcastic wits among the smart set in the later eighteenth century

did begin to claim that Vauxhall was losing its glamour. Nonetheless,

it was still the done thing to attend, though not every evening. The

season’s nale in late September was notoriously louche. Thus a young

blood in Evelina exclaimed cheerily:

Why, Lord, it’s the best night of any; there’s always a riot,–… and

then there’s such squealing and squalling! – and there all the lamps

are broke,–and the women run skimper scamper;–I declare I would

not take ve guineas to miss the last night!

Fanny Burney’s ctional account was out-matched by a real event that

had occurred a few years earlier. On 4 September 1774 the London

press reported that: ‘upwards of fteen foolish Bucks, who had

amused themselves by breaking the lamps at Vauxhall, were put into

the cage there by the proprietors, to answer for the damage done’.

This incident was relatively unusual for the scale of the rowdiness. It

is instructive, however, in revealing the ‘instant justice’ exacted by the

management. Very few other references can be found to the ‘cage’.

The episode indicated the discreet way in which order was maintained

by a shadowy team of Gardens’ watchmen.

Combining style with good management allowed Vauxhall to draw

many visitors from its large consumer market close at hand. Over time,

however, the vicinity of London became a threat as well as a bonus.

The trafc to and from the site continually multiplied and the transport

system showed signs of strain. Busy evenings often meant delays and

irritations for would-be visitors. ‘After scrambling under the bellies

of horses, through wheels, and over posts and rails, we reached the

Gardens, where there were already many thousand persons’, wrote

Horace Walpole half-jokingly half-complainingly, after attending a

crowded Ridotto in 1769.

Worse still, from the point of view of Vauxhall’s proprietors and

customers, the new bridges that improved access to the south bank

of the Thames also accelerated the process of industrial development

along the riverside. The economic logic of metropolitan demand was

generating conicting pressures upon land use in London’s immediate

vicinity.

Already attracted to the river banks were barge builders, brewers, and

miscellaneous manufacturers. In 1747 the Gardens found themselves

cheek-by-jowl with a massive plate-glass manufactory, as revealed in

Rocque’s map of that date.

By 1799 the London map by Richard

Horwood indicated the further presence on the riverbank of a corn

distillery and a vinegar factory. [ILLUS/5] Rows of housing were also

in evidence between Glasshouse Street and Vauxhall Walk. The old

pathway that once led visitors from the river at Vauxhall Stairs through

grassy elds to Vauxhall Gardens was already becoming overwhelmed

by industrial might – and blight.

Without owning any of the adjacent properties, the Tyers family and

their successors had no way of safeguarding the local ambiance. And

even had the proprietors acquired more terrain in the vicinity, it was

highly unlikely that they could have halted the economic trends that

were bringing runaway growth to London and concentrating many

industries on the unfashionable south bank, where manufacturers had

good water supplies and water transport as well as rapid access to

metropolitan markets.

Ultimately, there was no overriding reason why the premier open-

air leisure resort in the country should be located in this particular

spot and no other. Vauxhall did have the claim of priority. Yet that

could not counter-act the lure of prots from industrial and housing

developments. As the nineteenth century unfolded, Vauxhall became

increasingly down-at-heel and its location dingier. The Thames was

becoming an industrial waterway and ‘poverty clings to the water’,

as Charles Booth noted bleakly when surveying the London labour

market in the 1880s.

In general it is observable that the entertainment industry is a mobile

one that is highly sensitive to amenities and fashionability. Without

being able to stem the rising industrial tide around it, Vauxhall faced

multiplying pressures.

Nevertheless these famous pleasure gardens took a very long time to

die. Signs of change were apparent, it is true, long before the end.

Many of Vauxhall’s mature trees were felled in 1810/11, in order to

create more open space for popular exhibitions and events that could

attract great crowds.

As large numbers of visitors were needed to

make the Gardens nancially viable, the style moved down-market.

After all Vauxhall still remained locationally handy for middle-and

working-class revellers seeking lively entertainments close at hand.

The new owners in 1822 had done their best to augment the Gardens’

status by renaming them as the ‘Royal. This change was made with the

blessing of George IV, who as Prince of Wales in the 1780s had been

a jovial Vauxhall devotee–though as monarch he kept his distance.

New ‘Juvenile Fetes’ in the years 1823–35 gave free entry to children

under 12. The bumper summer season in 1823 saw as many as 140,000

people passing through the ticket-gates.

Handbills and posters were

continually circulated to advertise the programmes.

From 1823

onwards a dedicated journal entitled the Vauxhall Observer appeared

for over 50 issues, with ‘critical remarks’ upon the amusements and

plaudits for the latest songs. A similar venture followed in 1841, when

the spirited Vauxhall Papers were issued three times a week during the

season.

Successful innovations had already come in the form of sensational

rework displays, rst introduced in 1798 and then becoming a

Vauxhall speciality.

And in the afternoons ballooning exhibitions

were popular, being witnessed by large crowds. Skilled performers

were recruited from around the world – including many, but no means

a majority, from the English-speaking colonies. In 1816–22 one

popular star was Madame Saqui, a French tight-rope walker. In 1821

and 1822 another was Ramo Samee, an Indian juggler and sword-

swallower. In 1842 the star billing went to Isaac Van Ambergh ‘the

celebrated Lion King’ from North America, whose three lions spent

the winter of 1842/3 at Vauxhall. And in 1848 the hero was the New

Yorker William Henry Lane, dancing under the stage-name of Master

Juba. With his touring company of ‘Ethiopian minstrels’, he pioneered

a new and thrilling tap-dance, in a fusion of styles including Irish,

Spanish and African inheritances.

Other performers also came from

Belgium, Germany, Italy, Greece, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Algeria, and

Africa, including a lithe troupe of ‘Bedouin Arab’ acrobats.

Yet the pressures of organising an al fresco variety show in an

increasingly unpromising site were obvious. Commentators in the

nineteenth century began to note the forlorn state of the trees and the

drab nature of the décor. The critical Leigh Hunt denounced Vauxhall

in 1815 as ‘a conned and comparatively mean place … only a better

sort of tea-garden’, with an unattractive reputation for vulgarity and

debauchery.

Social pressures from the Surrey magistrates, who licensed the

Gardens, were beginning to exert control over the wilder revels. In

1806, the Saturday night frolics generated so many complaints that

weekend openings were halted for some years. Another blow came in

1825, when the entire Dark Walks were illuminated – by order of the

local magistrates.

Later the management took a radical decision in 1836 to open the

Gardens in the mornings, to boost visitor numbers. Yet much of

Vauxhall’s magic was lost in the harsh light of day. Charles Dickens

as ‘Boz’ was an instant critic. Vauxhall by day was ‘a disappointment

at every turn; our favourite views were mere patches of paint; the

fountain that had sparkled so showily by lamp-light, presented very

much the appearance of a water-pipe that had burst; all the ornaments

were dingy, and all the walks gloomy.’

The clumsy rope-dancing

performance, he added cuttingly, was as dispiriting as ‘a country dance

in a family vault’.

Prot margins were increasingly squeezed. In response the portions of

food served there were gradually minimised. Thackeray wrote wittily

in Vanity Fair (1847) that Vauxhall was a place where ‘happy feasters

made-believe to eat slices of almost invisible ham’.

Fading glamour was signalled by an eventual fall in the value of the

Vauxhall Gardens site, even while London land values were generally

rising. In 1821 the business with its commercial goodwill was sold

for £30,000. Yet twenty years later in 1841 the site was purchased

for only £20,000 at an auction in which many of the old ttings were

dispersed.

The sale plan shows that the trees had been further culled,

leaving most of Vauxhall as an open exhibition ground. [ILLUS/6]

It still remained one of London’s growing list of attractions. If no longer

a regular haunt of aristocracy, then aristocrats might still visit Vauxhall

to enjoy the popular entertainments. When she came out in the 1840s,

the future horticulturalist and daughter of the 3rd Earl of Orford, Lady

Dorothy Nevill wrote enthusiastically about the place: ‘Vauxhall at

that time was a great fashion, and the smart world often went there

and had their fortunes told by a picturesque old gipsy in a grotto’.

her account had slight implications of conscious slumming, then it was

clear that the slumming was highly enjoyable. With the aid of its long

tradition and ever-varying programmes, Vauxhall kept its reputation

for entertainment in the context of safe social mixing.

Much yet remains to be understood about the place and its magic.

The role of music in advertising the pleasures of Vauxhall has been

mentioned already. Songs and dances were particularly well suited to

appeal to people from a wide range of ages and backgrounds. Even the

minority who did not enjoy Vauxhall might nd themselves humming

or singing its tunes. Later, too, music and prints alike contributed to the

survival of the legend of the Gardens, as collections of Vauxhall songs

and memorabilia were gathered and recirculated.

But there came a nal blow. In 1848 a viaduct for the railway-line

into the new Waterloo Station was constructed close to the Gardens’

north-west corner, creating an even greater barrier to the river and

furthermore bringing noise, soot, smoke, and overlooking. Repeated

announcements in the 1850s tried to goad the crowds by advertising

positively the ‘last season’.

By this time, however, London had an ever-growing and ever-

diversifying number of rival places for public entertainment. The great

Crystal Palace exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851 drew huge crowds,

before relocating in 1854 to Sydenham in south London. In Regent’s

Park, the open-air London Zoo lifted its initial restrictions upon entry

and welcomed fee-paying visitors from 1847 onwards. And for popular

music-lovers, the new Alhambra Music Hall in Soho opened its doors

in 1854.

So ‘Old Vauxhall’ nally closed–after an extra-festive Last Night on

25 July 1859. The reworks spelt out ‘Farewell for Ever’. Unkindly, a

commentator in The Times remarked that it was like saying good-bye

to ‘the ghost of some friend who has been dead for some years’.

Vauxhall – Meanings and Legacy

Overall, Vauxhall’s legacy conveys many messages. Its saga of rise and

fall can be interpreted in terms of gradual change from year to year,

and yet again, at times, in terms of response to major urban upheavals.

But its role also illuminates some human continuities that cross the

barriers between town and country, and between one era and those

that follow. All these dimensions interlocked to produce Vauxhall’s

chequered history.

Continuities in human social life are often very persistent. One

example is the continuing interest in face-to-face social gatherings,

despite many other forms of change. Even in today’s world of distance

communications, the human species remains intensely gregarious.

And the earlier shift from a rural to an urbanised society did nothing

to curb that characteristic. Indeed, towns as meeting-places multiplied

the possibilities. The success of eighteenth-century Vauxhall, situated

in a great world metropolis, indicated that great cities are not just

spasmodic aggregations where people come just to work and sleep.

Nor are they merely travel inter-changes that are traversed on the way

to somewhere else. Instead, towns and cities foster human sociability,

not just among small groups of friends but also among crowds of

strangers.

How social encounters are organised in a mass urban environment not

only differs from the forms of social life in small communities, it also

varies from one urban culture to another. Some traditions place various

restrictions upon the visible role of women, so that public sociability

becomes a predominantly male experience. In Britain, however, as in

many parts of Europe, that sort of gender segregation did not apply.

Triumphantly Vauxhall in its prime showed how social meetings of

men and women, old and young, rich and (relatively) poor could be

harmoniously organised to share in communal entertainments and

festivities. The open-air venue of the Gardens gave scope for spontaneity

and informality, while its programmes provided ‘specialness’ by their

topical responses to market opportunities. Meanwhile Vauxhall’s

sylvan surroundings conrmed the perennial attraction of in-town

greenery for people living in densely-built city environments.

Many

rival parks and gardens continued to be developed across London.

Other cities too saw the creation of their own green areas and pleasure

grounds. Some even took the name of the pioneer, in tribute. Thus, as

well as the already-mentioned ‘Wauxhalls’ in Paris, there followed a

Vauxhall Gardens in Birmingham and another in New York (to name

but two examples).

Here is a theme of undoubted interest for later generations of town

planners and urban developers. As the process of urbanisation

continues to bring more and more people into towns, so the quest

continues to provide great cities with opportunities for gatherings that

are spontaneous yet orderly, popular yet distinctive, accessible yet

somehow special.

The nature of such amenities is bound to remain

variegated. But the future of urban pleasure gardens seems assured,

especially given the growing appreciation of the green agenda.

Indeed, for a comparison, visitors today can enjoy Copenhagen’s

Tivoli Gardens (initially named as Tivoli & Vauxhall, in tribute to both

Paris and London). This venue was founded in 1843, in the heart of

Denmark’s capital city, and continues to ourish under the protection

of local bye-laws, which keep 75% of the site green.

Successful shared assemblies and popular entertainments moreover

play an important social role. They both draw from and reinforce

the communal ‘glue’ that bonds people together in towns, including

tourists, travellers, new residents, and long-term urban stayers.

Conicts, tensions, and differences are not thereby eliminated. Human

societies retain their disconcerting capacity to switch suddenly from

apparent calm to uproar. Victorian Britain was a case in point. It was

hardly conict-free. Indeed, Vauxhall, where the crowds drank and

danced, was located close to Kennington Common where the last great

Chartist rally took place in April 1848 as Britain’s workers campaigned

to gain new political rights.

Nonetheless, while there are many sources of dispute and conict,

particularly when people feel that justice has not been served, there

are also countervailing social forces that operate to hold societies

together. One of those remains a broadly shared sociability and

sense of communitas. Such cohesive elements were symbolised and

augmented by the mass pleasures of Vauxhall – not uniquely, of course,

but symptomatically.

Changing times, meanwhile, indicated the need for constant

adaptation to maintain a successful role. Here was a second message

of micro-change. Vauxhall was a business as well as a social exemplar.

Throughout its history, from a small-scale Restoration tea-garden

among the trees, to its magnicent eighteenth-century heyday, and its

dogged Victorian survival, successive managers displayed an ability to

update and amend its amenities and programmes.

Emblems of national unity were invoked upon occasion, especially

in war-time years of crisis. In the 1750s, at the time of the Seven

Years War, Vauxhall saw many patriotic displays; and the same was

true again during the prolonged wars against Revolutionary and

Napoleonic France. Victories, when they came, provided occasions

for special festivities. For many years after 1815, there was a grand

commemorative display in the Gardens each June on the anniversary

of Waterloo. The atmosphere of intense relief joined with triumph was

pregured, too, by Vauxhall’s Grand Fête in June 1813, celebrating

Wellington’s decisive victory at Vittoria against the French in the

Spanish peninsular war.

Tactical manoeuvres to entice in the crowds were part and parcel of

commercial management in a competitive leisure industry. Vauxhall

did invoke patriotic loyalty when it seemed appropriate. But its

programmes and imagery were carefully diversied, rather than

just conned to one theme. The design of the site was eclectic, with

architectural curiosities among the walkways alluding to the rustic (a

water-mill), the romantic (ruins, a hermit’s grotto), and the exotic (a

Moorish tower). And among the trees stood Roubillac’s two imposing

statues, not to kings and generals, but to John Milton and George

Handel.

All this made Vauxhall into a great cultural bazaar. It was not possible

to provide everything for absolutely everyone. Vauxhall could not

offer the social exclusivity of Ranelagh. Yet successive managers tried

hard to cater for a broad swathe of customers throughout changing

tastes and times and did so successfully for many years. By the end

its historic legend was part of its reputation. It became known as ‘Old

Vauxhall’ in the mid-nineteenth century, adding nostalgia into the mix.

Nothing, however, is permanently safe-guarded against upheaval.

History incorporates a dimension of turbulence and macro-change,

whose impact is hard to forecast. The process of rapid urbanisation is

often disruptive in itself. Within fast-growing cities, the demand for

urban entertainments is far from the only factor to be accommodated.

And in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Britain there were no

planning controls to prevent or slow or even to manage changing

patterns of land use.

Admittedly not far to the south-east of the Vauxhall site, the new Oval

cricket-ground did succeed in establishing itself from 1845, on the site

of a former cabbage garden, cheek-by-jowl with main roads, inner

urban housing and a gas-holder that still looms nearby. Its patrons,

however, were seeking not an urban Elysium for evening entertainment

but the more modest aim of a good sporting wicket for day-time use.

They organised themselves as the Surrey County Cricket Club and

in 1855 purchased the ground-lease from the Duchy of Cornwall to

prevent the site from being developed for housing.

By contrast Vauxhall had no organised fans to lobby in its defence. The

business was always privately run, with no share-holders who might

rally in support. Even if a benefactor had emerged to purchase the

Gardens for the public – and, better still, to enlarge the cramped site

by gaining land access to the riverside – Vauxhall’s location was fast

losing its allure for the entertainment industry.

Successive transformations were part and parcel of metropolitan

expansion. Such changes make it implausible to equate the history

of Vauxhall simply with a thrusting ‘Modernity’, as suggested by the

cultural geographer Miles Ogborn.

The Gardens faded as well as

rose. But the demise of Vauxhall did not mark the end of ‘Modernity’.

The two were far from identical. The concept of ‘Modernity’ is itself

a uid and subjective one, which has no agreed denition – whether

commercial, industrial, political, or cultural – and therefore no agreed

historical dating.

68, 73

Linking Vauxhall to ‘Modernity’ thus does not say anything very

specic. That terminology might as well be applied to (say) the

ourishing theatre world in Shakespeare’s London

when the leisure

sector was rst expanding on a grand scale but before Vauxhall was

planned. By the later sixteenth century the metropolis was already

becoming celebrated as a centre for ‘conspicuous consumption’.

it might be applied to the nineteenth century when ‘modern’ London

was becoming a world city and imperial capital,

while Vauxhall was

experiencing problems and eventual demise.

The processes of urban transformation have continued unabated since

then. Other historians attribute metropolitan ‘Modernity’ not to the eras

of the Stuarts, the Hanoverians, or Queen Victoria, but to the twentieth

century.

In the case of London the years after 1951 brought many new

processes, this time of industrial relocation and partial slum clearance.

By the early twenty-rst century the Thames riverbank at Vauxhall

is home to high-rise luxury housing, while on the old Gardens site a

small patch of inner-urban grassland has been restored. [ILLUS/7].

If therefore it is claimed that an urban ‘Modernity’ made the Vauxhall

Gardens possible in the eighteenth century, then an equally urban

‘Modernity’ unmade them in the mid-nineteenth century, whilst a later

urban slum-clearing ‘Modernity’ in the later twentieth century has

yet again remade a patch of local greenery. It bears the old name of

Spring Gardens as a memory marker. After restoration it was re-named

Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in early 2012.

Historically, Vauxhall’s saga represented something much more specic

than a general sign of ‘modern times’. Entertainment industries in

mass societies have to remain continually on their toes, to keep abreast

of changing patterns of supply and demand. They also thrive most

spectacularly when they establish their own brand magic. Vauxhall did

that with the added glamour of sexual excitement. Meanwhile, in a

turbulent world, they have no guarantee of permanent survival.

Consequently a better explanation for the processes that made and

unmade Vauxhall would be the meeting of mass sociability with

the restless dynamics of commercialised leisure and the repeated

upheavals of urban transformation.

Vauxhall – Walking into History

Things were not always perfect in the real Gardens that preceded the

later legend. Sometimes it rained and the revellers stayed at home.

Sometimes the celebrities did not attend and/or the festivities fell

at. Sometimes the eager visitors with high hopes were disappointed.

Sometimes, too, the place became too raucous and unruly to please

the local magistrates. As time passed, moreover, Vauxhall faced

every-greater competition from rival venues and from other forms of

entertainment.

Legends, however, rise above such gritty realities. In its prime Vauxhall

represented the appeal of communal enjoyment al fresco amongst an

eclectic mix of people. It signalled that mass living may bring not only

potential problems but also real social pleasures. In practical terms

its success was shown by the many rival ‘Vauxhalls’. It was also the

ancestor of countless festival gardens, theme parks, civic promenades,

seaside gardens, and carnival grounds. Within London it is a reminder

of what can be done on the south bank of the river, close to the heart

of the city. For example, there was a distinctly Vauxhallian echo in the

1951 Festival in Battersea Park.

Hence wherever there is a harmonious conjunction between convivial

mass entertainments, with their own glamour, and an attractively

managed urban environment, the Vauxhall message applies. One

enthusiast in 1750 expressed appreciation of the dream:

When the Night is warm and serene, the Gardens ll’d with ne

Company, and different Parts of them are illuminated, the Imagination

cannot frame a more inchanting Spectacle.

So the revellers promenading to the sound of music under the trees

hung with glimmering Vauxhall lamps–along with the diners, the

drinkers, the dancers, the musicians, the entertainers, the Masters of

Ceremonies, the discreetly efcient workforce, the pick-pockets, the

watchmen, and the lovers strolling amorously in the secluded Dark

Walks – all these together walked into a living history.

Endnotes

1 64 venues (with Vauxhall as the 65th) are reported in W. Wroth with A.E.

Wroth, The London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century (1896; in 1979

reprint). A further 59 minor gardens in the nineteenth-century metropolis are

surveyed in W. Wroth, Cremorne and the Later London Gardens (1907), pp.

93–7.

2 Wroth and Wroth, London Pleasure Gardens, pp. 76–80.

3 Entry for 29 May 1662, in R. Latham and W. Matthews (eds), The Diary of

Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription (1970), Vol. 3, p. 94.

4 The Pleasures of ye Spring Gardens, Vauxhall, c. 1735 (libretto Mr. Lockman;

music Mr Boyce), in British Library Bound Vol: Broadsheet English Songs,

G316d.

5 For Jonathan Tyers (1702–67), see New Oxford Dictionary of National

Biography. His name is recalled today by Jonathan Street and Tyers Street,

both in S.E.11. D. Coke and A. Borg, Vauxhall Gardens: A History (2011), pp.

175–206, is notably strong on Vauxhall as a business enterprise.

6 See Coke and Borg, Vauxhall Gardens, passim; Wroth, London Pleasure

Gardens, pp. 286–326; J.G. Southworth, Vauxhall Gardens: A Chapter in the

Social History of England (1941); W.S. Scott, Green Retreats: The Story of

Vauxhall Gardens, 1661–1859 (1955); and M. Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity:

London’s Geographies, 1680–1780 (1998), pp. 119–33, 142–48, 150–7. There is

also a superb website produced by David Coke: see www.vauxhallgardens.com.

And the Victoria & Albert Museum British Galleries offers an engaging video (3

mins/ 09sec) of An Evening at Vauxhall Gardens.

7 Southworth, Vauxhall Gardens, pp. 67–8. In 1846 the lamps were converted to

gas-lighting.

8 For poetry about Vauxhall, see the collection in www.victorianlondon.org.uk.

9 J. Uglow, Hogarth: A Life and a World (1997), pp. 315–20; R. Paulson,

Hogarth: His Life, Art and Times (1971), Vol. 1, pp. 347–8.

10 For the craftsmanship of Mr. Maidman, of whom otherwise little is known, see

Southworth, Vauxhall Gardens, pp. 43–4. But Coke and Borg suspect, perhaps

unfairly, that other help was supplied, since the work seemed too sophisticated

for an ‘otherwise unknown tradesman’: Coke and Borg, Vauxhall Gardens, p.

218.

11 This verdict from Frank Kidson is cited in Sands, Invitation to Ranelagh, p.

9. See also Coke and Borg, Vauxhall Gardens, pp. 139–74; H. Cunningham,

Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, c. 1780-c.1880 (1980), pp. 164–5; A.L.

Borschel, ‘Development of English Song within the Musical Establishment of

Vauxhall Gardens, 1745–84’ (unpub. PhD thesis, British Columbia University,

1985) and J.B. Bach, Favourite Songs Sung at Vauxhall Gardens, Originally

Published in London, 1766–79, ed. S. Roe (1985).

12 C. Hogwood, Handel: Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks

(Cambridge, 2005), pp. 84–6, 88–9, 94. But for a corrective against taking

inated contemporary estimates of the numbers in attendance too literally, see

D. Hunter, ‘Rode the 12,000? Counting Coaches, People and Errors En Route

to the Rehearsal of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks at Spring Gardens,

Vauxhall in 1749’, London Journal, 37 (2012), pp. 13–26.

13 Arne’s song Rule Britannia (1740) still features, suitably enough, at the Last

Night of the Proms – these concerts (1895-present) being indirect descendants

of the Vauxhall summer showcase of music for promenaders. In recent years,

the simultaneous transmission of the Proms to outdoor audiences is even more

reminiscent of the Vauxhall al fresco experience.

14 For Vauxhall and music, see Wroth London Pleasure Gardens, pp. 67–80;

Southworth, Vauxhall Gardens, pp. 144–70, and information in the website:

www.vauxhallgardens.com.

15 Tyers’ 1738 announcement is cited in Scott, Green Retreats, p. 26.

16 Ranelagh’s entrance fee was 2s.6d (including refreshments): see M. Sands,

An Invitation to Ranelagh, 1742–1803 (1946); and Wroth, London Pleasure

Gardens, pp. 199–218.

17 See W. Wroth, Tickets of Vauxhall Gardens (1898), pp. 3–5, 7–12; Coke and

Borg, Vauxhall Gardens, pp. 397–410: Appendix 2. A touch of Hogarthian

drollery can be seen in John Robinson’s medallion (1751), featuring Orpheus

with his lute, accompanied by a tiny ape playing a violin.

18 Wroth, London Pleasure Gardens, p. 291.

19 R. Norton, Mother Clap’s Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England,

1700–1830 (1992), pp. 70–91; and P. Carter, Mollies, Fops and Men of Feeling:

Aspects of Male Effeminacy and Masculinity in Britain, c. 1700–80 (1995).

20 C. Dickens, Sketches by ‘Boz’: Illustrative of Everyday Life … (1836), Vol. 1, p.

314.

21 Diary entry 26 June 1718 by William Byrd II (1674–1744), as cited in Coke and

Borg, Vauxhall Gardens, pp. 28–9.

22 Anon. [C.F. Partington], A Brief Historical and Descriptive Account of the Royal

Gardens, Vauxhall (1822), p. 29.

23 For a brief report on a rarely mentioned topic, see Coke and Borg, Vauxhall

Gardens, p. 202.

24 F. Burney, Evelina: Or, the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World

(1778), ed. E.A. Bloom (1982), p. 197. The next quotation comes from the same

source: p. 195.

25 Coke and Borg, Vauxhall Gardens, pp. 76, 193.

26 Diary entry 23 April 1668 by Samuel Pepys (1673–1703), as cited in Coke and

Borg, Vauxhall Gardens, p. 22.

27 P. Edwards and P. Rewt (eds), The Letters of Ignatius Sancho (Edinburgh

University Press: Edinburgh, 1994), p. 104.

28 Coke and Borg, Vauxhall Gardens, p. 221.

29 See D. Cruickshank, The Secret History of Georgian London: How the Wages of

Sin Shaped the Capital (2009), esp. pp. 165–73; and T. Henderson, Disorderly

Women in Eighteenth-Century London: Prostitution and Control in the

Metropolis, 1730–1830 (Harlow, 1999), pp. 27–35.

30 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 6.0,

consulted 28 March 2012), Jan.1745, trial of Henry Sims (t17450116–15): the

witness Mrs Moore, who gave her occupation as a wine-seller, was alleged by

others to be a bawdy-house keeper.

31 J. Keats, ‘To – ’, in J. Barbard (ed.), John Keats: The Complete Poems (1976),

p. 226.

32 On the impolite world, see variously J. Peakman, Mighty Lewd Books: The

Development of Pornography in Eighteenth-Century England (Basingstoke,

2003); V. Gatrell, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century

London (2006); S. Dickie, Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature

and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century (Chicago, 2011).

33 F. Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution

(2012), esp. pp. 3–4, 77–8, 80–98, 138–40, 232–3, 363–4. But for a critical

review, which argues that Dabhoiwala not only underplays earlier libertinism

and the sporadic nature of sexual monitoring but also glosses over later shifts

in sexual behaviour, see Germaine Greer, The Observer, 22 Jan. 2012: www.

guardian.co.uk/books/2012/Jan/22/origins-of-sex-review.

34 J. Buncle [T. Amory], The Life of John Buncle, Esq: Containing Various

Observations and Reections, Made in Several Parts of the World … (1756),

Vol. 1, p. 460.

35 Southworth, Vauxhall Gardens, pp. 84–5, 91–2.

36 P.M. Hembry, The English Spa, 1560–1815: A Social History (1990); and P.J.

Coreld, The Impact of English Towns, 1700–1800 (1982), pp. 51–65.

37 Wroth, London Pleasure Gardens, p. 311.

38 On this, see variously S. McVeigh, ‘Introduction’, in S. Wollenberg and S.

McVeigh (eds), Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain (2004), pp. 9, 27; W.

Weber, ‘Musical Culture and the Capital City: The Epoch of the beau monde in

London, 1700–1870’, in Wollenberg and McVeigh (eds), Concert Life, pp. 77–

81, 86–7; and C. Ehrlich, The Music Profession in Britain since the Eighteenth

Century (1985), pp. 47–8, 54–61.

39 Much the best source for information about Vauxhall’s behind-the-scenes staff,

who are ignored in the older histories, is the website: www.vauxhallgardens.

com.

40 Anon. [J. Lockman], A Sketch of the Spring-Gardens at Vaux-Hall (1750), p. 24.

41 Vauxhall head cook found drowned: Whitehall Evening Post, Sat. 15 July 1749;

Vauxhall waiter suffered cramp while washing in the Thames and drowned:

General Advertiser, Wed. 19 July 1749.

42 J. Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. R.W. Chapman (1976), p. 960.

43 Key novels with scenes set in Vauxhall are listed at the end of Suggestions

for Further Reading. Paintings of episodes from Samuel Richardson’s Pamela

(1740) were hung at Vauxhall, even while Richardson referred disapprovingly to

the place as symptomatic of luxury and moral decadence.

44 See Anon. [C. Simpson], The Life and Adventures of C.H. Simpson, … Written

by Himself (1835), p. i: addressing his ‘Most illustrious, Eminent, Puissant, and

Distinguished Readers …’

45 Wroth, London Pleasure Gardens, p. 306.

46 Quoted in Southworth, Vauxhall Gardens, p. 30.

47 Compare J. Rocque’s ‘Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster’ (1747)

in R. Hyde (ed.), The A to Z of Georgian London (1981), p. 39; and Richard

Horwood’s 1813 ‘Map of the Cities of London and Westminster’, in P. Laxton

(ed.), The A to Z of Regency London (1985), p. 67.

48 J. Roebuck, Urban Development in Nineteenth-Century London: Lambeth,

Battersea and Wandsworth, 1838–88 (1979), pp. 128, 130–1.

49 For the changing ground plans of Vauxhall, see Coke and Borg, Vauxhall

Gardens, pp. 417–22.

50 For patriotic displays at Vauxhall, see Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity, pp. 142–8.

51 J. Conlin, ‘Vauxhall Revisited: The Afterlife of a London Pleasure Garden,

c.1770–1859’, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 45 (2006), pp. 718–43; Coke and

Borg, Vauxhall Gardens, pp. 249–360.

52 For the Vauxhall Gardens Archive, visit the Lambeth Archives at the Minet

Library, London SE5, or consult online at www.landmark.lambeth.gov.uk. See

also 71 ches in Adam Matthew Publications (2005), for which see also www.

adam-matthew-publications.co.uk/…/vauxhall.

53 Southworth, Vauxhall Gardens, pp. 84–5, 91–2; Wroth, London Pleasure

Gardens, pp. 312–14; Coke and Borg, Vauxhall Gardens, pp. 265–7. For

Vauxhall’s association with pyrotechnic displays, see C. Antonio, The Art of

Making Fire-Works, as Displayed at Vauxhall … (1840).

54 See J. Newman, Windrush Forbears: Black People in Lambeth, 1700–1900

(Lambeth Archives, 2002), pp. 50–62; plus images between pp. 63–4; and

website www.masterjuba.com. With thanks to Sean Creighton for drawing these

resources to my attention.

55 Drawn from list of performers in www.vauxhallgardens.com.

56 Leigh Hunt in The Examiner, no. 282 (1815).

57 C. Dickens, Sketches by Boz …: The Second Series (1837), pp. 217–18.

58 W.M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero (1847; in 1954 edn), p.

63.

59 Wroth, London Pleasure Gardens, pp. 316, 322.

60 R. Nevill (ed.), The Reminiscences of Lady Dorothy Nevill (Edward Arnold:

London, 1906), p. 71.

61 In 1890, a four-day fundraising event for the London & South Western Railway

Company’s Orphanage, held in Kennington, was entitled ‘Grand Illuminated

Revival of the Old Vauxhall Gardens, with its Quaint Old Evergreen Bowers,

and Illuminations’, based upon collection of old Vauxhall prints: see Poster in

British Library, Evanion Collection 631. www.bl.uk/catalogues/evanion/Record.

aspx?EvanID=024-000000525&ImageIndex=0.

62 See Coke and Borg, Vauxhall Gardens, pp. 324–5; and Southworth, Vauxhall

Gardens, p. 180.

63 See discussion in P. Clark and J.S. Jauhiainen, ‘Introduction’, in P. Clark (ed.),

The European City and Green Space: London, Stockholm, Helsinki and St.

Petersburg, 1850–2000 (2006), pp. 1–29.

64 Much helpful further information is provided in S. Creighton, ‘Vauxhall

Pleasure Gardens: Its Continuing Historical Inuence’ (History & Social

Action Publications, pdf/4: 2009), www.historysocialaction.co.uk.

65 H. Meller, Leisure and the Changing City, 1870–1914 (1976), esp. pp. 5–18.

66 See E. Midwinter, ‘Darling Old Oval’: A History of 150 Years of Surrey Cricket

at the Oval, 1845–1995 (1995), pp. 3–7.

67 For this argument, see Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity, pp. 1–28, 118–19, 122–8.

68 P.J. Coreld, Time and the Shape of History (2007), pp. 131–44.

69 See variously D. Bruster, Drama and the Market in the Age of Shakespeare

(Cambridge, 1992), esp. pp. 1–28; A. Leggatt, Jacobean Public Theatre (1992),

pp. 9–45; and A. Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge, 1996

edn).

70 See F.J. Fisher, ‘The Development of London as a Centre for Conspicuous

Consumption in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in F.J. Fisher,

London and the English Economy, 1500–1700, ed. P.J. Coreld and N.B. Harte

(1990), pp. 105–18.

71 Among many studies, see J. White, London in the Nineteenth Century: ‘A

Human Awful Wonder of God’ (2007).

72 As argued by P. Brooker, Modernity and Metropolis: Writing, Film and Urban

Formations (Basingstoke, 2002); and J. Donald, Imagining the Modern City

(1999).

73 On the uidities of periodisation, see P.J. Coreld, ‘Post-Medievalism/

Modernity/ Postmodernity?’ in Rethinking History, 14 (2010), pp. 379–

404; also available online via websites www.tandfonline.com; and www.

penelopejcoreld.co.uk, Pdf/20.

74 Anon. [Lockman], Sketch of the Spring-Gardens, p. 15.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Historians on Vauxhall

D. Coke and A. Borg, Vauxhall Gardens : A History (Yale University Press: London,

2011)

J. Conlin, ‘Vauxhall Revisited: The Afterlife of a London Pleasure Garden, c.1770–

1859’, Journal of British Studies, 45 (2006), pp. 718–43

J. Conlin, ‘Vauxhall on the Boulevard: Pleasure Gardens in London and Paris, 1764–

84’, Urban History, 35 (2008), pp. 24–47

P.J. Coreld, ‘Fantasias and Pleasure Gardens in Georgian and Victorian London’,

International Magazine for Follies, Grottoes and Garden Buildings, 77 (Autumn,

2010), pp. 16–18

T.J. Edelstein, Vauxhall Gardens (Yale Centre for British Art: New Haven, Conn.,

1983)

M. Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity: London’s Geographies, 1680–1780 (Guilford

Press: New York and London, 1998), pp. 116–57

W.S. Scott, Green Retreats: The Story of Vauxhall Gardens, 1661–1859 (Odhams

Press: London, 1955)

J.G. Southworth, Vauxhall Gardens: A Chapter in the Social History of England

(Columbia University Press: New York, 1941)

W. Wroth with A.E. Wroth, The London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century

(Macmillan, London, 1896; reprinted 1979), pp. 286–326

Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Novelists on Vauxhall

F. Burney, Evelina: Or, the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World (1778)

– letter 15 (a scene of sexual scandal averted just in time)

C. Dickens, Sketches by ‘Boz’: Illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday People

(1836), Vol. 1 (sardonic humour on Vauxhall by daylight)

C. Lennox, The Female Quixote: Or, the Adventures of Arabella (1752), Book 9, ch.

1 (the quixotic heroine mistakes a prostitute for a damsel in distress)

T. Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) – ch. 9 (contrasting

responses to the Gardens from the different characters, young and old)

W.M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero (1847), ch. 6 (scene of a key

moment in the fortunes of Becky Sharp, set in the Vauxhall of 1814)

Vauxhall Resources on the Web

Vauxhall Gardens Archive in www.landmark.lambeth.gov.uk

Websites: www.vauxhallgardens.com and www.vauxhallsociety.org.uk

Poems inspired by Vauxhall Gardens in www.victorianlondon.org.uk

History & Social Action Publications titles

Peter Kuenstler. Learning

About Community. Oxford

House in Bethnal Green

1940-48. For Oxford House

and the Settlements & Social

Action Research Group. ISBN

0-9548943-0-8. (2004) £5

Jason Young. Mother

Seacole. A Short Story.

ISBN 0-9548943-1-6.

(2005) £2. About Mary

Seacole in the Crimea.

Jonathan Wood. Bill Miller.

Black Labour Party Activist

in Plymouth. A Biographical

Sketch. In association with

Labour Heritage. ISBN

0-9548943-2-4. (2006) £3.

Stephen Bourne. Esther Bruce:

A Black London Seamstress.

Her Story 1912–1994. ISBN

978-0-9548943-7-5. (2012) £4.

Jon Newman.

Battersea’s Global

Reach. The Story

of Price’s Candles.

ISBN 978-0-

9548943-4-4 (2009)

£5.

Sean Creighton.

Organising Together in

Lambeth. A Historical

Review of Co-operative

and Mutual Social Action

in Lambeth. ISBN 978-0-

9548943-5-1. (2010) Free

as emailable PDF.

Simon Potter. Carry On

College. Forty Years at

Wimbledon College. A

Memoir. ISBN: 978-0-

9548944-6-8. (2011). £18

plus £5p&p

History & Social Action Publications

is run by Sean Creighton.

Further details see:

www.historysocialaction.co.uk

Orders can be sent to

H&SAP

6 Oakhill Road

London, SW16 5RG

[email protected]

Cheques payable to ‘Sean Creighton’

Mother Seacole

A Short Story

by Jason Young

History & Social Action Publications

ORGANISING TOGETHER

IN LAMBETH

A Historical Review of

Co-operative and Mutual

Social Action

Sean Creighton

History & Social Action Publications

ISBN No. 978-09548943-5-1

£2

Battersea’s Global Reach

THE STORY OF

PRICE’S CANDLES

Jon Newman

History & Social Action Publications

Jon Newman

Price’s Candles of Battersea was and still is a household name.

Yet the company’s history is so much more than the making of

candles.From its inception in the 1830s it re-invigorateda sleepy

and unchangedindustry by the application of scientificresearch.

Industrial chemistr y allowed it to develop the first stearine

candles and provide inexpensive good quali ty lighting. Forty

years later the discovery of oil and the use of paraffin wax for

candle manufacture

additionally turned it into an oil company.

As well as commercial success the company was not ed for its

ethical position on products – particularly the use of Palm Oil

for manufacture and the strong anti-slavery messag e that this

sent out in the 1850s – and for its radical approach to employee

relations, providing schools, housing and pensions for its

workers.The story of the 20th century is a familiarone of decline

and reinv ention – from manufacturing industry to retailer

heritage brand.

History & Social Action Publications

ISBN 978-0-9548943-4-4

£5.00

Esther Bruce

A Black London Seamstress

Her Story 1912–1994

by Stephen Bourne

and Esther Bruce

History & Social Action Publications

Penny Coreld

Vauxhall Gardens is a name that conjures the pleasures of big city life. It

reminds us that great towns provide opportunities for communal festivities

and concord, as well as the often-stressed potential for urban problems

and conict.

This study explains how Vauxhall emerged as the brand-leader of the

urban pleasure garden, from among the ranks of sixty or more rival

gardens in post-Restoration London. Vauxhall became fashionable; it was

popular; it was brilliantly organised; it was musical; it was entertaining; it

had reworks; it was a meeting place for lovers … it had it all.

Yet the continuing transformation of London brought change in its wake.

Vauxhall did not endure for ever. While the new Oval Cricket Ground

managed to survive in nearby south London, Vauxhall’s Pleasure Gardens

disappeared. It took more than fame and, later, nostalgia to keep a front-

rank leisure amenity going on the south bank. By studying Vauxhall’s rise

and fall, we can understand the upheavals of the entertainment sector in the

‘modern’ city. A new chapter in this second edition highlights Vauxhall’s

justied reputation for sexual glamour – and its legacy of eroticising the

leisure industry by linking sex and entertainment.

History & Social Actions Publications

ISBN 978–0–9548943-9-9 £5