Vauxhall Walk

Vauxhall Walk takes its name from the district of Vauxhall to its south. Vauxhall in turn is said to come from Falkes de Breauté, a head of King John's mercenaries, who owned a large house in the area known as Faulke's Hall — later Foxhall, and eventually Vauxhall. The Victoria County History gives a related account: Falkes de Breauté lived at Fawkes Hall, which came to him as the second husband of Margaret, widow of Baldwin de Redvers.

The manor behind the name had a long and shifting history. It was part of a larger South Lambeth Manor until the close of the thirteenth century, when in 1293 it passed to Edward I and was later divided into the manors of Vauxhall and Stockwell. Edward III granted Vauxhall Manor to the Black Prince in 1337, who passed it to the Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, in 1362; after the Dissolution it went to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, and its administration passed to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1862.

On Rocque's map of 1745, the lane — also called Lowner's Lane — runs between hedges and fields, from Lambeth Butts to Vauxhall Gardens. It marked the northern edge of the Gardens themselves. Development came in 1768, when the Duchy of Cornwall granted a building lease on the west side to William Pace, who put up 28 houses; only eight of these survive today, part of the terrace at Nos. 28–42.

Institutional building followed in the mid-nineteenth century. The Wesleyan Chapel and Schools date from 1841, the Boys' School from 1849 and the Girls' School from 1852. By the 1950s the chapel and schools were recorded as too damaged to use — a condition of that time, not of today. Vauxhall Gardens itself closed and was built over between 1859 and 1864, with Vauxhall Walk forming one of the boundaries of the old pleasure-ground site. At its southern end, the stretch once known as Vauxhall was later absorbed into the Albert Embankment.

Wilkie Collins gave the street a moment in print, written not long after the Gardens themselves had closed and the surrounding fields were being built over.

William Pace put up the street's first substantial houses under his 1768 lease, eight of which still stand.

A century later the street turned industrial. George Warner ran a ginger beer and mineral water factory at the Black Dog, 112 Vauxhall Walk, in the 1860s. Charles Henry Kempton owned the Albert Glass Works on the street in the late 1880s, a business that ran from 1880 to 1920.

Industry has left its mark along the street. At Nos. 83–97 stands a group of buildings for the Surrey Ironworks and Horatio Myer & Co. Ltd, bedstead manufacturers, carrying an unusual mosaic sign. A war memorial at the Graphite Square entrance is dedicated to the employees of the Myer Bed Factory that once stood there.

Several pubs mark its corners. The Tea House Theatre at No. 139 is a former pub of red brick. The Lavender, on the corner of Vauxhall Walk and Glasshouse Street, is a red brick building with Dutch-style gables, formerly known as the Black Dog. Another old pub stands at the corner of Vauxhall Walk, Spring Gardens and Laud Street. The Victorian terraces are seen as part of what gives the area its character, alongside newer red brick buildings judged to fit in.

Walk it now and the pattern still holds: terraces, a former chapel site, pub corners and the long brick flank of a bedstead works. The pleasure gardens it once bordered are gone, but the lane that led to them is still there, carrying their name forward in brick and stone.