This is the first of two blog posts from when I visited the town of Real del Monte, one of Mexico’s 177 ‘magical towns’, in the state of Hidalgo, with Miss CDMX.
You could probably visit Real del Monte as a day trip from Mexico City, but we opted to stay the night.
The second blog post details our visit to the Acosta Mine.
In this one, we visit the Panteón Inglés or the English Cemetery.
Real del Monte, formerly Mineral del Monte, is less than 20 km from Pachuca, the capital of the State of Hidalgo.
Real del Monte has a long history as a mining town. The Spanish were here first, but the mines were constantly flooding.
The ‘English’ arrived in 1824, mostly from Cornwall, bringing with them the steam-driven machines that could pump out the water.
The Panteón Inglés or the English Cemetery was established in 1851, although the earliest gravestone is that of Robert Tindall, who died in 1834.
There are many other gravestones of miners and their families from Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
You will also find gravestones from China, Germany and the Netherlands.
Mexicans buried here are descendants of the British who lived in Real del Monte.
There are many Masonic symbols on gravestones in the Panteón Inglés:
John Vial, a Mexican-English soldier, died of wounds received on the Somme, September 5, 1916. He was laid to rest in Rouen, France. This is a memorial to him.
Prince Charles laid flowers on his visit to Real del Monte in 2014:
You will notice the pillar at the head of this grave. It looks like it has been vandalised, but no. This is because the soldier died at a young age, his life cut short:
We met the current caretaker of the English cemetery, María del Carmen Hernández Skewes, daughter of Inocencio Hernandez Lara, who worked at the cemetery for 47 years and received recognition from the Queen in 2005. She opened the small museum next door just for us (it was during the pandemic), seeing as we had come all the way from England, so we could see the list of names of the people buried here.
Miss CDMX chatting with María del Carmen Hernández Skewes in the small museum adjacent to the Panteón Inglés.
