Вексхоллские сады: история лондонского развлечения

Public park in London, England
the British pleasure gardens

Vauxhall Gardens '/v//ɒ//k//s//ɔː//l/ is a public park in Kennington in the London Borough of Lambeth, England, on the south bank of the River Thames. Originally known as New Spring Gardens, it is believed to have opened before the Restoration of 1660, being mentioned by Samuel Pepys in 1662. From 1785 to 1859, the site was known as Vauxhall, a pleasure garden and one of the leading venues for public entertainment in London from the mid 17th century to the mid 19th century. The Gardens consisted of several acres of trees and shrubs with attractive walks. Initially entrance was free, with food and drink being sold to support the venture. It was accessed by boat until the erection of Vauxhall Bridge in the 1810s. The area was absorbed into the metropolis as the city expanded in the early to mid 19th century. The site became Vauxhall Gardens in 1785 and admission was charged for its attractions. The Gardens drew enormous crowds, with its paths being noted for romantic assignations. Tightrope walkers, hot air balloon ascents, concerts and fireworks provided entertainment. The rococo "Turkish tent" became one of the Gardens' structures, the interior of the Rotunda became one of Vauxhall's most viewed attractions, and the chinoiserie style was a feature of several buildings. A statue depicting George Frideric Handel in the Gardens later found its way to Westminster Abbey. In 1817, the Battle of Waterloo was re enacted, with 1,000 soldiers participating. It closed in 1840 after its owners suffered bankruptcy, but re opened in 1841. It changed hands in 1842, and was permanently closed in 1859. The land was redeveloped in the following decades, but slum clearance in the late 20th century saw part of the original site open up as a public park. This was initially called Spring Gardens and renamed in 2012 as Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. It is managed as a public park by the London Borough of Lambeth. Vauxhall Gardens is depicted in a tile motif at Vauxhall tube station by George Smith.

Eminent 18th century scholar John Barrell, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, brings out Vauxhall's significance. "Vauxhall pleasure gardens, on the south bank of the Thames, entertained Londoners and visitors to London for 200 years. From 1729, under the management of Jonathan Tyers, property developer, impresario, patron of the arts, the gardens grew into an extraordinary business, a cradle of modern painting and architecture, and  music  A pioneer of mass entertainment, Tyers had to become also a pioneer of mass catering, of outdoor lighting, of advertising, and of all the logistics involved in running one of the most complex and profitable business ventures of the eighteenth century in Britain." References to Vauxhall are, for 150 years, as ubiquitous as references to "Broadway" later would be. For example, an old Polish word for a pleasure garden (foksal) and the name of Foksal street in Warsaw are Polonized versions of Vauxhall. In Russia, vokzal (вокзал) has become synonymous with railway stations (and sometimes other transportation hubs) due to the preponderance of such "entertainment establishments" as the Vauxhall near train stations in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Spring Gardens were the most prominent vehicle in England for the public display of the new Rococo style. The earliest pictorial representation of Tyers' Spring Gardens, Vauxhall, is the "Vauxhall fan" (1736), an etching printed in blue designed to be pasted to a fan; it shows the earliest groups of pavilions, in a sober classical taste, but the interiors of the supper boxes were painted by members of Hogarth's St. Martin's Lane Academy, prominent among them Francis Hayman. Hayman provided most of the subjects, which were rapidly executed by students and assistants; Hubert Gravelot provided designs for two others, and Hogarth's designs were pressed into service in hastily dashed off copies that filled the back of every box. At a certain hour, all the paintings were let down at once, to offer some security to the companies at supper and a suitable backdrop, one observer thought, for the live beauties of London. Frederick, Prince of Wales, who had come to England with his father George II in 1728 and who was a prominent patron of the Rococo, took sufficient interest in the Gardens to have his own pavilion built from the very first. The first fully Rococo structure erected at the Spring Gardens, Vauxhall, was the "Turkish Tent" that was still a novelty in 1744; "this fantastic structure introduced that element of frivolous impermanence which became so characteristic of Vauxhall," David Coke has remarked. In the course of the 1740s it was joined by other examples of Rococo chinoiserie and above all by the Rotunda, with the most viewed Rococo interior decoration in England, designed by George Michael Moser, another member of the St. Martin's Lane Academy; the ornaments were "Executed by French and Italians" George Vertue noted.

Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens today is an inner city park. After its closure in the 19th century the land was developed but by the 1970s slum clearance reopened part of the site. The park opened in 1976 and was originally called Spring Gardens, but was re named Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in 2012.