Pleasure Gardens
Felicity Day takes a look at the glamorous and decadent world of 18th-century pleasure gardens
Felicity Day takes a look at the decadent and sometimes dangerous world of 18th-century pleasure gardens
Aseries of letters from a London-based writer who called himself “S Toupee” appeared in The Scots Magazine in 1739. “Your distance from a kind of entertainment so new amongst us, and so much approved, especially by the Ladies, may make an account of it acceptable,” he wrote, before offering a detailed description of a visit to “Vaux-Hall gardens”
– a “melodious grove” that had been, he said, “the great resort of personages of the first rank… for the last five years”.
His “Vaux-Hall” was not a completely new form of entertainment. Since the 1660s (at least) there had been a public park on the same site near Lambeth, south of the Thames. “It is very pleasant and cheap going thither,” diarist Samuel Pepys wrote in 1667. “To hear the nightingale and other birds… and [to see] there fine people walking, is mighty divertising.”
However, the new Spring Garden, as it was then called, had acquired a seedy reputation thanks to the “strumpets” reported to stalk its walks. It was only in 1732 that the disreputable park was transformed into a place of fashionable – and
paid-for – alfresco entertainment, after entrepreneur
reinvented and reopened it. Popular and profitable, it was a favourite haunt of aristocrats and apprentices alike by the 1750s.
Into Elysium
As Toupee outlined, a visit began with a boat ride up the river – the
Vauxhall until the opening of Westminster Bridge in 1750. Visitors entered through the
spilling out into an ‘elysium’ – a space about as far removed from the smelly, noisy streets of the city as it was possible to find.
The cost of admission was 1s, comparable to the cheapest seat at the theatre or a day’s pay for a labourer. The vast grounds thronged with a crowd of about 1,000 people a night. Everyone from dukes and duchesses to doctors and their wives, actors
and shopkeepers passed through the gates during the open season, which (weather permitting) lasted from early May to September. And even though, in reality, lords and ladies rarely mingled with anyone outside their own class, Vauxhall and the “equality it occasions” was a source of pride for writers and a source of interest for foreigners, who noted that it united “both sexes,
The presence of the fashionable elite in their finery was a draw in itself, but Vauxhall – part rural retreat, part amusement park – offered much more besides. A series of tree-lined and lamplit walks opened up invitingly from the main grove, promising picturesque vistas enhanced by obelisks and ornamental arches, and trilling nightingales. They competed with the orchestra in the large octagonal bandstand, and the small ensembles dotted around the grounds.
There was no cheaper way of hearing high-quality music than at Vauxhall – both “vocal and instrumental” and “not too refined for the general ear”, noted diarist James Boswell. Handel’s music was regularly performed, and Thomas Arne was an in-house composer; his works include Rule, Britannia!. There was also contemporary art to be admired, from classical statutes to the history paintings by Francis Hayman that decorated the supper boxes. In these – from which the music was still “very distinctly heard” – visitors could enjoy a light meal, although the portions were notoriously stingy.
Large-scale events were designed to draw crowds, from masked balls (‘ridottos’) like the one held on the opening night in 1732, to concerts. New artworks and attractions were continually introduced, too,
one of the most spectacular in a pre-electric age being the cotton-wool fuses that allowed the thousands of glittering glass lamps to be lit simultaneously. “All in a Moment, as if by Magic, every Object was made visible,” enthused novelist Henry Fielding in 1742. Another favourite was the Cascade. This “mechanism of extraordinary ingenuity”, wrote German tourist Karl Moritz after a visit in 1782, was so convincing that “it is not easy to persuade one’s self… that one does not actually see and hear a natural waterfall from a high rock”.
Unsurprisingly, Vauxhall’s success spawned copious copycat venues. Bath, the spa resort of choice for the beau monde, had its own Spring Gardens from 1735, eclipsed by the new Sydney Gardens after 1795. The largest example outside London, this had grottos and a labyrinth, and Jane Austen looked forward to “illuminations & fireworks” there in 1799. Norwich, meanwhile,
Ladies of the night conducted discreet trysts amidst Vauxhall’s dense trees
had four gardens by the 1770s, Liverpool three and Dublin two.
In London, Tyers had more than 60 competitors. Most were smallscale gardens or bowling greens, attached to taverns and catering chiefly for our working-class ancestors. Sixpence purchased entry to Bagnigge Wells on the northern outskirts, a favourite haunt of highwayman SixteenString Jack, which combined a flower garden and fountains with a skittle alley. Marylebone Gardens, created in the 17th century, was a serious rival after it relaunched in 1738, its fireworks popular with the middling sort; but it was Ranelagh Gardens in Chelsea, opened in 1742 and favoured by the wealthy and well-born, that was Vauxhall’s main challenger. It was famous for its vast concert rotunda and lavish masquerade parties, when the aristocratic company paraded in fancy dress around the festively decorated gardens. “Nothing in a fairy tale ever surpassed it,” declared Gothic novelist Horace Walpole in 1749. With no alcohol and a costlier entrance fee it was more exclusive, but less exciting.
Danger And Debauchery
Ranelagh offered little of the frisson of danger and debauchery that came with a visit to Vauxhall. Because just as visitors might spot the Prince of Wales and his cronies, so too might they encounter a pickpocket, or a well-dressed prostitute. The admission charge did not deter ladies of the night, and it was well known that they sought their clients in the comparatively private Dark Walks and even conducted discreet trysts amidst the dense trees. They could also be found in the more open areas. “What most astonished me,” said Karl Moritz of his supper at Vauxhall, “was the boldness of the women of the town, who
often rushed in upon us by half dozens, and in the most shameless manner importuned us for wine.”
Women, too, might find themselves harassed – by drunken men. “Some bucks, who thought their spirit justified indecency, treated several modest women in a very rude manner,” reported the Morning Chronicle in 1788. The gentlemen in their company flew to their defence, resulting in “a battle royal”. Riotous behaviour was a persistent problem: memoirist Henry Angelo described the Vauxhall of the 1770s as “more like a bear garden than a rational place of resort”, a place where quarrels were decided through fistfights watched by a gleeful crowd, and the “riffraff” threw bottles into the supper boxes of respectable families. A riot traditionally broke out on the last night of the season.
But it was boredom rather than brawling that began to keep visitors away as the 19th century approached. Both Marylebone and Ranelagh closed by 1803, as aristocrats began to weary of strolling the same groves, and the growing middle-class audience demanded more for their money. Vauxhall – along with many of its provincial counterparts – evolved and survived, offering regular fireworks from 1798, and everything from acrobatics to balloon ascents, tightrope walkers to Waterloo re-enactments in the Regency years and beyond. Some trees and walkways had to be sacrificed to provide the necessary showgrounds for circuses, comedies and ballets, but the pleasure garden was given a new lease of life, increasingly attracting the working classes. So popular was the concept that new competitors sprung up, including Cremorne Gardens in Chelsea, a pleasure garden from 1843, and resorts in Manchester and Birmingham.
Yet it became increasingly hard to compete with the seaside resorts, municipal parks, pubs
away Boredom began to keep visitors as the 19th century approached
and music halls of Victorian Britain. The pleasure garden began to seem like a relic of a bygone age, and an expanding London was encroaching on their once-rural idylls. By the 1840s railway tracks ran close to Vauxhall’s border and visitors were treated to a view of nearby gasometers, while Cremorne was soon to be surrounded by housing. More profitable as building plots, they closed in 1859 and 1877 respectively. But the glorious Georgian entertainment that was the pleasure garden lived on in the bandstands and piers, and in the theme parks, outdoor theatres and alfresco concerts we still enjoy today.