Toponymy For a list of street name toponymies in the district see Street names of Vauxhall. The
toponymy of Vauxhall is generally accepted to have originated in the late 13th century, from the name of
Falkes de Breauté, the head of King
John's mercenaries, who owned a large house in the area, which was referred to as Faulke's Hall, later Foxhall, and eventually Vauxhall.
Samuel Pepys mentions "Fox Hall" in his diary on 23 June 1665: "....I took boat and to Fox Hall, where we spent two or three hours talking of several matters very soberly and contentfully to me, which, with the ayre and pleasure of the garden, was a great refreshment to me, and, ‘methinks, that which we ought to joy ourselves in." The area only became generally known by the name Vauxhall when the
Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens opened as a public attraction and movement across the Thames was facilitated by the opening of
Westminster Bridge in the 1740s.
In the Russian language Competing theories are given as to why the Russian word for a
central railway station is (), which coincides with the canonical 19th-century transliteration of "Vauxhall". It has long been suggested that a Russian delegation visited the area to inspect the construction of the
London & South Western Railway (L&SWR) in 1840, and mistook the name of the station for the generic name of the building type—a "vaux hall", as it were. This was further embellished into a story that Tsar
Nicholas I of Russia, visiting London in 1844, was taken to see the trains at Vauxhall and made the same mistake. Alternatively, the locality of the L&SWR's original railway terminus, Nine Elms Station, was shown boldly and simply as "Vauxhall" in the 1841
Bradshaw timetable. Both these explanations can probably be dismissed, since the
first public railway in Russia had already been built by 1837. This line ran from
Saint Petersburg via
Tsarskoye Selo to
Pavlovsk Palace, where extensive
pleasure gardens had earlier been established. In 1838, a music and entertainment pavilion was constructed at the railway terminus. This pavilion was called the
Vokzal in homage to the
Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in London. The name soon came to be applied to the station itself, which was the gateway that most visitors used to enter the gardens. It later came to mean any substantial railway station building (a different Russian word, (), is used for minor stations). The word () had been known in the Russian language with the meaning of "amusement park" long before the 1840s and may be found, e.g. in the poetry of
Aleksandr Pushkin: ("To Natalie" (1813): "At
fêtes or in
voksals, /I've been flitting like a gentle
Zephyrus" [here "Zephyrus" is an
allegory of a gentle, warm and pleasant wind ]) According to
Vasmer, the word is first attested in the
Saint Petersburg Vedomosti for 1777 in the form , which may reflect the earlier English spelling of Fox Hall/Faukeshall. Englishman
Michael Maddox established a Vauxhall Gardens in the Saint Petersburg suburbs (Pavlovsk) in 1783, with pleasure gardens, a small theatre/concert hall, and places for refreshment. Archdeacon
William Coxe describes the place as a "sort of Vauxhall" in that year, in his
Travels into Russia.
Early history No mention of Vauxhall is made in the 1086
Domesday Book. The area originally formed part of the extensive
manor of
South Lambeth, which was held by the family of de Redvers, who purchased several de Redvers lands (including the Lordship of the Isle of Wight) from
Isabel de Forz, 8th Countess of Devon (1237–1293), sister and heiress of
Baldwin de Redvers, 7th Earl of Devon (1236–1262), shortly before her death. In 1317 King
Edward II granted the manor of Vauxhall, Surrey, to Sir
Roger d'Amory for his "good services" at the
Battle of Bannockburn. From various accounts, three local roads – the
South Lambeth Road,
Clapham Road (previously Merton Road), and
Wandsworth Road (previously Kingston Road) – were ancient and well-known routes to and from London. Vauxhall was the south western terminus of the
Civil War defences of London, thrown up by Londoners in 1642 to defend against
Royalist incursions. A landmark fort was located at the present site of the Elephant and Castle public house (currently a Starbucks).
Development The land was flat and parts were marshy and poorly drained by ditches, and only started to be developed with the draining of
Lambeth Marsh in the mid-18th century, but remained a village. Prior to this, it provided market garden produce for the nearby
City of London.
Vauxhall Bridge and
Vauxhall Bridge Road were opened in 1816. By 1860, the village had been subsumed by the town of Lambeth. Many of Vauxhall's streets were destroyed during the construction of the railway to
London Waterloo via the
Nine Elms to Waterloo Viaduct, by German bombing in
World War II or ravaged through poor city planning. ==Demography==