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 
