St Peter's Church, Kennington Lane

Why is it significant?

St Peter's Church on Kennington Lane in London was built in the 1860s on the former site of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens' firework tower. Designed by architect John Loughborough Pearson on an £8,000 budget, the church offered entirely free seating to serve the poor. Its decorated interior features an alabaster reredos by Poole of Westminster and Venetian mosaics by Salviati, while the adjacent vicarage was converted from the gardens' original manager's house.

Key Facts

What to look for?

• St Peter's Church in London stands on ground occupied by Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens from 1660 to 1859.
• Architect John Loughborough Pearson built St Peter's Church in the 1860s with a modest budget of £8,000.
• The sanctuary inside St Peter's Church features an alabaster reredos created by Poole of Westminster.
• The vicarage at 308 Kennington Lane is the only surviving building from the original Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

Photo: Google

Listen · 2:56

What historic entertainment site previously occupied the location of St Peter's Church on Kennington Lane?

You're standing before Saint Peter's Church on Kennington Lane... and you might never guess that beneath your feet lies one of London's most extraordinary secrets. What if I told you that the exact spot where the high altar stands inside this church was once the site of a Firework tower... a place where rockets and flames lit up the London sky for thousands of cheering revellers? For nearly two hundred years, this ground belonged to the legendary Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens... London's most famous entertainment venue. From sixteen sixty to eighteen fifty-nine, this was where Samuel Pepys strolled, where Handel's music filled the night air, and where sixty-one thousand people once gathered in fancy dress for a single gala evening in seventeen eighty-six. The walks were lit by fifteen thousand glass lamps. Masked balls, tightrope walkers, hot air balloon ascents... this was London's original playground. But in eighteen fifty-nine, the party ended. The final firework display spelled out the words "Farewell For Ever" in blazing letters... and Vauxhall Gardens was closed and sold off. Now here's where it gets fascinating. The developer who bought the land gave the site for this church on one remarkable condition: that every single seat must be free. No rented pews. You see, a man named Gregory, the vicar, was fiercely opposed to the pew-rent system because it excluded the poor. He agreed instantly. The architect chosen was John Loughborough Pearson... and this was his first major town church. He'd go on to design Truro Cathedral, the first new Anglican cathedral built in England since Saint Paul's. But here in Vauxhall, working on a modest budget of just eight thousand pounds, Pearson created something extraordinary. The exterior is deliberately plain... because the idea was that the spirituality of the interior would reveal itself only once you stepped inside. A planned grand tower was never built, but the richly decorated sanctuary, with its alabaster reredos crafted by Poole of Westminster and mosaics by Salvati of Venice, remains remarkably intact from the eighteen sixties. And next door, at number three oh eight Kennington Lane, stands the original manager's house of Vauxhall Gardens... the only building from the pleasure gardens to have survived both the demolition and the slum clearances of the nineteen seventies. Pearson simply converted it into the vicarage. From a house of entertainment... to a house of God.