Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (Spring Gardens)

The Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens were the first pleasure gardens to be opened and, originally known as the New Spring Garden, were at their peak of popularity in the C18th. They were laid out with walks and flower gardens and the public was not charged for admission. Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn and Jonathan Swift were among the many visitors, who included royalty and the aristocracy. Ownership of the land passed to Jonathan Tyers in 1728 who is commemorated in the name of a local street. On 7 June 1732 Tyers and the painter William Hogarth, who had moved to the area, spectacularly re-launched the park as a place of entertainment after which an entrance fee was charged and all manner of entertainments laid on, particularly musical events, which were patronised by high society. Frederick Prince of Wales was patron until his death in 1751. Various exuberant buildings and structures were built to house these events, and the gardens were laid out with new tree-lined walks and gardens. Tyers' sons Jonathan and Thomas took over managing the pleasure gardens after their father's death in 1767. In 1792 the Barratt family, related by marriage to the Tyers, took over ownership and continued to provide new entertainments, which included fireworks from 1798, Balloon Ascents from 1802, and later tightrope performances by Mme Saqui. Under new ownership again in 1821, the gardens were then re-opened the following year, permitted by the King to be re-named The Royal Gardens, Vauxhall. Over the next decades they continued under different owners, with brief periods of closure, but in 1859 they finally closed for good. Their decline was particularly affected by the building of the railway viaduct from Nine Elms to Waterloo that severed the gardens from the river, but it was not unrelated to the popularity of the new Crystal Palace at Sydenham.

The site and its contents were sold by auction for £800 on 22 August 1859 and all traces of Vauxhall Gardens soon disappeared as the land was re-developed for housing. In the 1970s these houses, by all accounts cheaply built, and now badly neglected and having suffered severe damage during the war, were demolished in the post-war slum-clearances. At that time the creation of inner-city parks was on the national agenda, as a result of which part of the former site of the famous pleasure gardens was cleared and laid out as a park, now in the ownership of the local authority LB Lambeth. Spring Gardens opened to the public on 9 October 1976. Vauxhall City Farm, which is part of the overall site, was set up in 1977 as one of the Jubilee City Farms with funds from the Silver Jubilee Celebration Committee. 

Spring Gardens, while it provided important public open space, bore little resemblance to the former glories of the Pleasure Gardens, although for a time a tethered balloon run by Skytours offered rides with views of London. It was largely open grass on undulating land, with paths and seating, sports facilities and some landscaping, but without particularly notable features. The Friends of Vauxhall Spring Gardens was set up in 1998, particularly as a result of the threat of a £300m leisure complex proposed for the site. In 2004 it was recipient of Section 106 monies through Vauxhall Cross Development. In 2012, the park was substantially re-landscaped and when it re-opened was renamed Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. Two 18m high columns, evoking the spirit of the former pleasure grounds and designed by local architects DSDHA, were erected at the new entrance near the site of the old Coach Entrance to the gardens on Kennington Lane adjacent to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. (The Royal Vauxhall Tavern is south London's oldest surviving 'gay' venue). One of the other original entrances to the historic Pleasure Gardens was first replaced by the Lord Clyde Pub.  Later converted into a hostel it burnt down and was left as open ground until, in 2017 a new building was erected and opened, as The Cabinet, a high end art gallery.  Associated with this new building, a landscape design by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan was introduced with planting around the building and a Cherry Walk traversing the park diagonally to the columns near Vauxhall stations.

The park today, extending north from Vauxhall Cross, contains an all-weather ball games area, together with horse riding paddocks developed in association with the Vauxhall City Farm. It is widely used for community events, which have included fireworks and an ice rink. In 2015, the Royal Bank of Canada Waterscape Garden designed by Hugo Bugg, which had won a gold medal at the 2014 Chelsea Flower Show, was recreated on a piece of ground adjacent to the old Queen Anne pub. That same year it featured in the Chelsea Fringe Festival as part of the 'Vauxhall Missing Link Green Trail' joining the parks and open spaces of Vauxhall.