Monkey Rock Cemetery

The cemetery, on the upper slopes of Green Mountain, was consecrated by the Bishop of St Helena where he visited Ascension Island in 1861 to consecrate St Mary’s Church in Georgetown. As noted in my St Mary’s review it had taken about 15 yrs to persuade a bishop to come to the island – even an 1852 offer of an eleven gun salute didn’t do the trick.

The earliest recorded memorial in the cemetery is 1856 – Eda, an infant born in North East Cottage on the Mountain who passed away at the age of 10 months.

Being located just below “ The San”, a naval hospital/ sanatorium built for fever sufferers in 1867 and now the residence of the island’s Administrator, it naturally became to final resting place of many of the Sans patients. There are a depressingly large number of young men and children buried here.

There are a couple notable recent interments in this rather old cemetery and they are Bernard Edward Pauncefort and his wife Patricia Anne. Bernard was Administrator from 1980 to 1982. Their ashes were interred here in 2010 and 2004 respectively, many years after they had left the island. Clearly the island was special to them – Bernard’s memorial plaque states “his ashes join his beloved wife’s and are now part of the place they both so loved”.

Various plaques attest to the fact that the graveyard is periodically renovated by visiting British troops.

Access to cemetery is via the grounds of The Residency. The path is clearly marked from there with the cemetery a couple of hundred metres walk downhill.

Please respect the privacy of the Residency as the continuing granting of public access is at the discretion of the Administrator. It would be a shame if future visitors could not visit this moving cemetery. 

Address: Green Mountain
Directions: About 200 metres from the Residency

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This blog entry is one of a group (loop) of entries on my trip to Ascension Island. I suggest you continue with my next entry – HERE.
To return to the beginning of this loop click HERE.

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