Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens

Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens is a medium-sized park located in the middle of Vauxhall, providing a green get-away and a home to Vauxhall City Farm.

The park is located on what was the site of the original ‘Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens’, a privately managed ‘entertainment venue’ first laid out in 1661 and which reached its maximum popularity in the early 19th Century. The Gardens were very popular and commercially successful, with dining, visual arts, and live music, and became a magnet for Londoners and tourists from all classes and backgrounds. It was a place to see and be seen at, with famous names such as Handel, Casanova, Pepys and Rossini all being noted as visiting or mentioning it in diaries.

The Gardens finally closed in 1859 after their popularity declined with changing tastes, and the site was used for housing. After the Second World War the site was cleared of housing and laid out as a public open space, known as Spring Gardens, with a network of paths, grass mounds and trees.

The site has recently benefited from significant investment which resulted in not only it being renamed ‘Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens’, but improvements in appearance, access, landscape and biodiversity. This includes a multi-use games area with associated lighting, new tree planting, upgraded paths and areas of meadow grassland, many containing swathes of colourful spring-flowering bulbs.