"Pleasure Gardens"
© Meg Greene Malvasi
Although we may think of amusement parks as a modern forms of entertainment, they actually have been around for a long time. In fact, the idea of an amusement park, or "pleasure parks" as they were once called, existed as far back as the 12th century! In 1133, an English monk named Rahere instituted a 10-day fair to raise building funds for a monastery and a hospital. This event was more of a trade fair, but there were also strolling entertainers, clowns, and food booths.
By the Elizabethan period (16th century), such trade fairs had evolved to become more like carnivals. As people walked the grounds, they were entertained by jugglers, puppet shows, dancers, and musicians. Another great atttraction were the "freak shows," which showcased strange and sometimes deformed oddities of nature. There were also games and food. By now, these fairs often charged admission for entrance. Beginning in the 18th century, carnival owners found that grouping flaming torches to light carnival entrances attracted people to the site. This use of lighting is still an important element in amusement parks today.
One city famous for its "pleasure gardens" was London, England. Here people paid an admission fee to walk around acres of lovely landscaped gardens. Two of the most popular spots were Vauxhall Gardens and Ranelaugh Gardens. On any given day, the rich and the working class rubbed shoulders while being entertained by hot-air balloonists and tightrope walkers who dodged colorful and exploding rockets. There were also musical concerts, theatrical presentations, and elaborate firework displays. For many in 19th-century England, these gardens offered a welcome retreat from a world turned gray and dingy by the Industrial Revolution.
A smaller, but unique, English "pleasure garden, "Jenny's Whim," was an early forerunner to the modern amusement park. Designed in the mid-eighteenth century by a fireworks engineer and theatrical machinist, the park advertised the first primitive mechanical "monsters." (The same idea reappeared almost two centuries later in Disneyland!) Visitors walking along the park's paths would activate hidden "triggers" and would marvel at the huge fish and lovely mermaids that rose to the surface of the park's ponds. The park also made use of the first "distortion mirrors." Now a common feature in many carnival and amusement park fun-houses, the specially made mirrors humorously distorted people's faces and bodies.
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