Long before festivals as we know them today, Pleasure Gardens were summertime venues where people from all walks of life converged to listen to music, admire paintings, stroll, drink, flirt and immerse themselves in the culture that defined this vibrant period.
The most famous pleasure gardens where in Vauxhall, but between 1851 and 1884 the Royal Docks had its very own Pleasure Gardens, named the Royal Victoria Gardens.
Walpole wrote:
“It was by far the best understood and prettiest spectacle that I ever saw . . nothing in a fairy tale ever surpassed it . . It began about three o’clock, and at about five (o’clock) people of fashion began to go. When you entered, you found the whole garden laid with masks and spread with tents . . in one quarter was a maypole dressed with garlands, and people dancing round it to a tabor and pipe and rustic music, all masked, as were all the various bands of music who were disposed in different parts of the garden.”
Charles Dickens wrote of a daylight visit to Vauxhall Gardens, in Sketches by Boz, published in 1836:
“We paid our shilling at the gate, and then we saw for the first time, that the entrance…That the place where night after night we had beheld the undaunted Mr. Blackmore make his terrific ascent, surrounded by flames of fire, and peals of artillery, and where the white garments of Madame Somebody (we forget even her name now), who nobly devoted her life to the manufacture of fireworks, had so often been seen fluttering in the wind, as she called up a red, blue, or party-coloured light to illumine her temple!”
James Boswell wrote:
“Vauxhall Gardens is peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English nation; there being a mixture of curious show, – gay exhibition, musick, vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear; – for all of which only a shilling is paid.”
Lydia Melford wrote:
“A spacious garden, part laid out in delightful walks, bounded with high hedges and trees, and paved with gravel; part exhibiting a wonderful assemblage of the most picturesque and striking objects, pavilions, lodges, groves, grottos, lawns, temples, and cascades; porticos, colonnades, and rotundas; adorned with pillars, statues, and paintings; the whole illuminated with an infinite number of lamps, disposed in different figures of suns, stars, and constellations; the place crowded with the gayest company, ranging through those blissful shades, or supping in different lodges, on cold collations, enlivened with mirth, freedom, and good humour.”
Collective experiences such as these made this period in London’s history famous for its pioneering social and creative spirit; yet our nation’s capital has been without anything of this nature for more than 150 years. Until now…
Discover more about the pleasure gardens of the past and their influence on London culture:
