Vauxhall Gardens /ˈvɒksɔːl/ is a public park in Kennington in the London Borough of Lambeth, England, on the south bank of the River Thames.

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.

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.

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.

John Aubrey, in his Antiquities of Surrey gives the following account: At Vauxhall, Sir Samuel Morland built a fine room, anno 1667, the inside all of looking-glass, and fountains very pleasant to behold, which is much visited by strangers: it stands in the middle of the garden, covered with Cornish slate, on the point of which he placed a punchinello, very well carved, which held a dial, but the winds have demolished it.

[14] 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;[15] 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.

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.

[17] 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.

In 1749 a rehearsal of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks attracted an audience of 12,000, and in 1786 a fancy-dress jubilee to celebrate the proprietor's long ownership was thronged with 61,000 revellers.

[21] Over time more features and eyecatchers were added: additional supper boxes, a music room, a Chinese pavilion, a gothic orchestra[clarification needed] that accommodated fifty musicians, and ruins, arches, statues and a cascade.

An admission charge was introduced from the beginning and later 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; and, though last, not least, good eating and drinking for those who choose to purchase that regale.

Thomas Brown in "Works Serious and Comical in Prose and Verse" (1760) says:The ladies that have an inclination to be private, take delight in the close walks of Spring-Gardens, where both sexes meet, and mutually serve one another as guides to lose their way; and the windings and turnings in the little wildernesses are so intricate, that the most experienced mothers have often lost themselves in looking for their daughters.

They bring together persons of all ranks and conditions; and amongst these, a considerable number of females, whose charms want only that cheerful air, which is the flower and quintessence of beauty.

I do not know whether the English are gainers thereby; the joy which they seem in search of at those places does not beam through their countenances; they look as grave at Vauxhall and Ranelagh as at the Bank, at church, or a private club.

The contributor to the Edinburgh Encyclopedia (1830 edition) comments that: the garden's great attraction arises from their being splendidly illuminated at night with about 15,000 glass lamps.

These being tastefully hung among the trees, which line the walks, produce an impression similar to that which is called up on reading some of the stories in the Arabian Nights Entertainments.

On some occasions there have been upwards of 19,000 persons in them, and this immense concourse, most of whom are well dressed, seen in connection with the illuminated walks, add not a little to the brilliant and astonishing effect of the whole scene.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, if there had been any magic about it at all, was now decidedly disenchanted, being, in fact, nothing more nor less than a combination of very roughly-painted boards and sawdust.

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!

They are the scene of a brief but pivotal turning point in the fortunes of anti-heroine Becky Sharp in Thackeray's 19th-century novel Vanity Fair, as well as a setting in his novel Pendennis.