Worgan Street is the new name for the former Catherine Street in the Vauxhall Gardens Estate area.
Spring Gardens was established here in the reign of King Charles II. Here could be found live entertainers, food and drink. It was a venue for amorous liaisons, as regular visitor Samuel Pepys noted.
In 1729, the
Vauxhall Spring-Gardens was sublet to the entrepreneurial Jonathan Tyers who saw an opportunity to provide a new style of entertainment for Londoners, charging an admission fee of one shilling to discourage the pickpockets and ’ladies of the night’. This became the first and best-known of London’s
pleasure gardens. Over the next 130 years Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens played host to concerts, operas, firework displays, circus acts, balloon rides and more.
In 1859, the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens were closed and the area redeveloped into housing. Catherine Street was built here and the street was renamed Worgan Street in the late 1930s.
In the 1970s, the local houses - some badly war-damaged - were demolished and redeveloped but Worgan Street survived though lined with new housing.
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Worgan Street is the new name for the former Catherine Street in the Vauxhall Gardens Estate area.
