‘Vauxhall’ means Falkes’ Hall, the house of a medieval knight.
Falkes de Breauté, head of King John’s mercenaries, owned a large house here in the 13th century; it became Foxhall, and Samuel Pepys still wrote ‘Fox Hall’ in 1665. The name spread with the Pleasure Gardens, and a pavilion built in 1838 at Pavlovsk in Russia, named after them, probably gave Russian its word vokzal for a station. The car maker took its name from the area.