There are few better ways to bribe angry mobs,it seems,than with a set of pleasure gardens.

And I have it from the best sources: Marc Anthony, Caesar’s best mate. His speech writer was none other than Mr Will Shakespeare.

Marc Anthony is bereaved of his best friend. Caesar has been murdered, and then Marc Anthony has to watch as his murderer charms the crowd.

But while Brutus has a silver tongue, it seems Anthony has a way with words too. He whips the crowd round to his way of thinking: and when they are ready to lynch Caesar, champing at the bit, he reminds them that Julius Caesar wrote a will.

To every Roman citizen goes seventy-five sweet drachma. Anthony speaks straight to their pockets. And then he turns to their dreams.

“Moreover , he hath left you all his walks. His private arbors, and new-planted orchards on this side Tiber; he hath left them to you, and your heirs forever; common pleasures to walk abroad, and recreate yourselves.”

That word – recreate. When we walk in a beautiful place, full of grace and the best that a garden can offer, we re-create ourselves. A pleasure garden is not just a means of relaxation – it is a means of re-inventing.

Today Maddie, Felix and I were in search of pleasure. We trundled on the train towards London; but we didn’t go as far as Waterloo.

No, we got off at a stop which attracted hordes of pleasure seekers for hundreds of years. But which seems, to all intents and purposes, to have forgotten all about its illustrious history.

Vauxhall appears just another built-up inner London community. From the railway we can see Battersea Power Station, all four table-legs in the air, and endless red-brick rooves and tarmac roads.

But there was a time when south of the river was London’s playground. People took a ferry across the water in Shakespeare’s time. Over they would come, and over London Bridge, for a sample of a more exciting and disreputable life than they could dream of in their daytime labours.

The Globe stood there, of course. So frowned upon were theatres that women could not attend unaccompanied by a man, and the Bishop of Winchester’s licensed ladies of the night showed their faces at daytime performances to tout for custom.

Bear baiting was de rigueur, further down. People flocked to these events: it was how London played.

And then, serendipitously, the widow of a vintner seems to have come in to a bit of land.

Jane Vaux inherited land at Vauxhall in 1615: and  sold it. In 1661 it was opened as a pleasure park. It was a place to see and be seen, to sail across the Thames, take a picnic and stroll around the walks and arbors.

Until now gardens were only for the privileged: now anyone could enjoy landscaped surroundings.

But far more attractive to your average Londoner was this: that the sexes could meet freely here, without the stiff sanctions so often present in polite society.

Samuel Pepys visited it many times and recorded its charms in his diaries. As time wore on, the gardens changed ownership. A young entrepreneur, Jonathan Tyers, acquired it in 1729 and began to charge a small fee for entry. He furnished the gardens with artistic wonders and give the orchestras top-quality music to play.

Vauxhall’s was at its zenith at this time: the Prince of Wales himself was a regular visitor. Where else could one mix with such company for the entrance fee of a shilling?

Vauxhall is part of the culture and receives much attention between 1661 and its eventual shabby closure in 1859.

But one of the most memorable visits must be that fated evening in which four young friends made their way around the pleasure gardens under the sardonic pen of Mr William Makepeace Thackeray.

The dashing young soldier, George, is accompanying Amelia, self-effacing heroine; and Becky Sharp, the quick-witted governess-to-be, has set her cap at one of the most ridiculous figures ever to set foot in the gardens. He is Amelia’s portly brother, and he is supposed to ask Becky to marry him this very night.

Thackeray talks of the gardens: of “a hundred thousand extra lamps , which were always lighted;the fiddlers in cocked hats, who played ravishing melodies under the gilded cockle-shell in the midst of the gardens;…the hermit that always sat in the illuminated hermitage; the dark walks, so favourable to the interviews of young lovers; the pots of stout handed about by the people in the shabby old liveries;and the twinkling boxes, in which the happy feasters made believe to eat slices of almost invisible ham..”

What a pleasure garden Thackeray paints.

It is surreal to alight from a modern train at Vauxhall, knowing all of this had been so vivid and was all utterly gone, chased away by the iron horse which could deliver Londoners to the sea and the pier.

By the time of its closure, the gardens had become shabby and dated, and the land was climbing rapidy in value.

St Peter’s Church, Kennington Lane, was built on the site of the celebrated fountain; and the rest was made into 300 building plots and sold.

We sold our city’s pleasure gardens for delights further afield, and with those 300 plots went almost two centuries of humanity, re-creating itself.

I wonder how Caesar and his best friend might have felt about that.