Vauxhall Manor

1893 text

Foxhall, Faukeshall, or Vauxhall, a manor in Surrey, properly Fulke’s. Hall, and so called from Fulke de Breaute, the notorious mercenary follower of King John. The manor house was afterwards known as Copped or Copt Hall. Sir Samuel Morland obtained a lease of the place, and King Charles made him Master of Mechanics, and here “he (Morland), anno 1667, built a fine room,” says Aubrey, “the inside all of looking-glass and fountains, very pleasant to behold.” The gardens were formed about 1661, and originally called the “New Spring Gardens,” to distinguish them from the “Old Spring Gardens” at Charing Cross, but according to the present description by Pepys there was both an Old and a New Spring Garden at Vauxhall. Balthazar Monconys, who visited England early in the reign of Charles II., describes the ‘Jardins Printemps’ at Lambeth as having lawns and gravel walks, dividing squares of twenty or thirty yards enclosed with hedges of gooseberry trees, within which were planted roses.

This text comes from a footnote on a diary entry in the 1893 edition edited by Henry B. Wheatley.

6 Annotations

First Reading

Pauline  •  Link

from L&M Companion
Vauxhall. Riverside gardens; a favorite place of resort for Londoners and visitors to London: consisting 'entirely of avenues and covered walks where people stroll up and down, and green huts in which one can get a glass of wine...although everything is very dear and bad. Generally vast crowds to be seen here, especially females of doubtful morals, who are dressed as finely as ladies of quality...' (von Uffenbach, 1710). The 'New Spring Garden' there was formed about 1661 and lay a little east of the modern Vauxhal Bridge. 'Foxhall' was the common contemporary spelling.

Second Reading

Bill  •  Link

Tradition has associated the name of Guido Fawkes with Vauxhall, but it is certain that he never had any connection with the place. It appears, however, that a house or store by the waterside at Vauxhall was hired by Robert Kayes, who was hanged and quartered along with Fawkes, Rookwood and Winter in Old Palace Yard, January 31, 1606. This house, which stood on a part of the present Nine Elms Station of the South-Western Railway, "was casually burnt down to the ground by powder" in 1634.
---London, Past and Present. H.B. Wheatley, 1891.

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References

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

1662