This article is about the town of Vauxhall, for Vauxhall the vehicle manufacturer, see Vauxhall Motors.

Vauxhall is an area of London in the London Borough of Lambeth. On the south bank of the River Thames, across the water from the Tate Britain art gallery, it is considered by many to be a community in flux.

The lands on which modern Vauxhall now stands belonged in the thirteenth century to Margaret de Redvers, a wealthy widow. She married Fulk le Breant, a mercenary soldier who was made Sheriff of Oxford and Hertford by King John, for services rendered. He was also granted the Manor of Luton, and adopted a griffin emblem as part of his coat of arms. The house they built was named Fulk's Hall, which name was gradually corrupted over time, first to Fox Hall, then Vaux Hall and finally Vauxhall. Vauxhall was home to the once divine Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, London's playground for two centuries. The arrival of the London and South Western Railway in the 1840s saw Vauxhall becoming a high-residence, light industrial area, the gardens broken up. In 1857 the Vauxhall Iron Works was founded in the area, to build industrial machinery. The company adopted a modified form of Fulk le Breant's griffin as its emblem, and later became Vauxhall Motors.

Now a major transport hub within minutes of central London, Vauxhall was neglected for many years. Many of its streets were also destroyed during World War II or through poor city planning. To many Londoners, Vauxhall has been seen merely as a bleak place of transit. However, a significant — and fast growing — community lives here.

Most Vauxhall dwellers still live in social housing — mostly quality low-rise, 1930s stock of four or five stories. Much of the area is light industrial (like New Covent Garden flower and vegetable markets). Vauxhall also has a high security service presence. It houses MI6, Britain's foreign spy service, and a number of other policing agencies.

Some 18th and 19th century property also survives — most famously Bonnington Square, a community which emerged from the 1970s/ 1980s squat scene in London, and remains mostly housing co-operatives today. The local MP for Vauxhall is Kate Hoey (Labour) — the area has traditionally been very left wing.

The Royal Vauxhall Tavern — a well-known gay venue

The late 1990s/early 2000s explosion in London property prices has led to a boom in riverside developments and property re-developments, such as the large St George Wharf development by Vauxhall Bridge. Notorious ex-MP and criminal Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare is perhaps Vauxhall's most famous resident, living in a large penthouse on the river.

The impact of this new house building — and the rise in house prices — is creating a dramatic change in Vauxhall's make-up. As the numbers living here rise steeply, long-term Vauxhall residents are being driven out of the area, replaced with moneyed people.

Vauxhall — the Russian connection

There are competing theories as to why the Russian word for a railway station is vokzal, pronounced very similarly to Vauxhall. It has been long suggested that a Russian delegation visited the area to inspect the construction of the London and South Western Railway in 1840, and mistook the name of the location for a generic title of the building type.

A more likely explanation, however, is that the first Russian railway, constructed in 1837, ran from St Petersburg via Tsarskoye Selo to Pavlovsk, 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 (Russian spelling of "Vauxhall") in homage to its famous London predecessor. The name soon came to be applied to the station itself, which was most visitor's gateway to the gardens, and later came to mean any substantial railway station building (a different Russian word, stantsiya, is used for minor stations).

Nearest places:

• Kennington
• Oval
• Pimlico
• Stockwell
• Camberwell
• Walworth
• Newington

Nearest tube stations:

• Vauxhall station
• Pimlico tube station

External Links

• The Vauxhall Society (http://www.vauxhallsociety.org.uk)
• A Strange Connection, between a garden, a train station and a composer (http://www.ludwigvanweb.com/navigation/1,1270,18-9-1,00.html)
• Michael Carter, "Vauxhall Gardens Revisit'd" (http://www.wual.ua.edu/carter_page_02.asp)