Eighteenth Century Transition

By the mid-eighteenth century, many of the park-surrounded mansions and pleasure gardens for which Lambeth was renowned were falling into disrepair. Many of these vacant sites beside the Thames steadily attracted manufacturers of stone, pottery, gin and vinegar; industries which relied upon river transport or a plentiful supply of water from the marshes, making Lambeth an ideal location. Maps show the appearance of wharfs and warehouses among the osier beds and timber yards, marking the gradual transformation of Lambeth from south bank seclusion to thriving industrial centre at the heart of the metropolis.

Map, Cary: shows the site of Beaufoy's Vinegar Yard (Cuper's Bridge being the site of Waterloo Bridge)
© London Metropolitan Archives, 2002

Mark Beaufoy was one of the aspiring industrialists seeking to exploit the advantages offered by a site in Lambeth. By 1763, most of Cuper’s Gardens lay derelict until Beaufoy acquired the lease of the remaining buildings to establish a manufactory of vinegar and ‘mimicked wines’. The young Quaker from Bristol could not approve of the moribund gaieties of the district which he considered had become ‘the emblem of ye Haggard, the seat of Desolation and the Disgrace of our Neighbourhood’. Timber, however, from the pleasure-ground buildings came in useful in building his vat and brew houses.

'Beaufoy's Brewhouse, Shewing the Orchestra in Cuper's Gardens'
© London Metropolitan Archives, 2002

Beaufoy’s wine and vinegar works was so successful that within half a century it had become one of Thomas Pennant’s show places in the environs of London: ‘The genial banks of the Thames opposite our capital, yield almost every species of white wine, and by a wondrous magic, Messrs Beaufoy pour forth… this ocean of sweets and sours’. Beaufoy amassed a large fortune from this enterprise, although this was due not so much to his skill in vinegar-making as his securing of large Admiralty contracts for vinegar which were used for preserving ships’ stores and as a detergent for washing ships’ decks.

Plans for building Waterloo Bridge, which was to decisively draw Lambeth within the urban orbit, necessitated the removal of Beaufoy’s from Cuper’s Gardens to South Lambeth Road in 1810, having by then dropped the manufacture of wine. The company continued into the twentieth century, and in 1932 united with British Vinegars Ltd. The Cuper’s Gardens site, after having been left by Beaufoy, was taken over by the New Strand Bridge Company for the building of the Waterloo Bridge approach road.