248 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



flocked to Ranelagh or Almack's. It was the sort of 

 place in which John Gilpin and his spouse might have 

 amused themselves, on a less important holiday than their 

 wedding anniversary. Twenty years later the scene had 

 changed. The rotunda was turned into a chapel, by the 

 Countess of Huntingdon, who took up her residence in 

 a jessamine-covered house that had been a tavern, near 

 to it. The gardens had already been turned into a 

 private burial-ground, which soon became notorious for 

 the evil condition in which it was kept. There every 

 single gravestone had disappeared long before it was con- 

 verted into the neat little garden, the delight of poor 

 Clerkenwell children. The rotunda was at length 

 pulled down, and in 1888 a new church was erected on 

 the site. The same disgraceful story of neglect and 

 repulsive overcrowding, can be told of the Victoria Park 

 Cemetery, although the ground had not such a strange 

 early history. It was one of those private cemeteries 

 which the legislation with regard to other burial-places 

 did not touch. It was never consecrated, and abuses of 

 every kind were connected with it. It is a space of 9^ 

 acres in a crowded district between Bethnal Green and 

 Bow, a little to the south of Victoria Park. After 

 various difficulties in raising funds and so forth, it was 

 laid out by the Metropolitan Gardens Association, 

 opened to the public in 1894, and is kept up by the 

 London County Council, and is an extremely popular 

 recreation ground, under the name of " Meath Gardens." 

 One of the quiet spots near the City is Bunhill Fields. 

 This has for over two hundred years been the Noncon- 

 formist burial-ground. The land was enclosed by a brick 

 wall, by the City of London in 1665 for interments "in 

 that dreadful year of Pestilence. However, it not being 



