did queen visit aberfan

The Crown : The True Story Behind Queen Elizabeth's Visit to Aberfan

The third season of The Crown tackles a dark moment in the history of the United Kingdom: In 1966, a coal waste tip collapsed and slid into a school in the mining village of Aberfan in Wales, claiming the lives of 144 people . Queen Elizabeth II (played by Olivia Colman) did not immediately visit the village, but she eventually decided to go eight days later, and ended up returning several times throughout her life.

While The Crown depicts its version of events, we're diving into what really happened in Aberfan, and what the Queen did in response.

The Disaster and Its Aftermath

Weeks of heavy rains caused the coal waste tip—that is, the pile of waste left over from the process of mining—to collapse and turn into a landslide on the morning of October 21, 1966. The avalanche hit a local school and other buildings in the town, ultimately killing 28 adults and 116 children, according to History.com . A committee eventually determined the National Coal Board was responsible for what happened.

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The Queen's Visit

As the show correctly depicts, at first Queen Elizabeth II neglected to visit Aberfan, sending Prince Philip instead. She ended up visiting the village almost a week after the disaster occurred, and later said her delayed response was her biggest regret as queen. History.com reports that while in the village, the monarch showed "poignant grief"—an atypical response for the usually stoic Elizabeth.

Marjorie Collins, an Aberfan woman who lost her son in the disaster, remembered the queen's visit in a 2015 interview with ITV : "They were above the politics and the din and they proved to us that the world was with us, and that the world cared." Another mother told ITV that no one judged the queen for her delayed response. "We were still in shock, I remember the Queen walking through the mud," she said. "It felt like she was with us from the beginning."

Throughout her life, the Queen visited Aberfan another four times.

How The Crown Recreated the Visit

According to the BBC , The Crown recreated the queen's first visit to Aberfan by filming in the small Welsh village of Cwmaman . The BBC characterized the 1966 visit as "one of the most touching moments of the queen's reign that is still remembered by the victims."

One onlooker who was watching the filming told the news site, "It was all very dignified, Olivia Colman is clearly taking her role very seriously. There was a very sombre mood. I think everyone involved in the production realizes what an awful tragedy Aberfan was."

The BBC also reports that, while on set at Big Pit National Coal Museum in Wales, The Crown director Benjamin Caron said, " Every series of The Crown looks at major political events and moments in history, and this is one of them. Of course we should do this. This story in particular affected the whole of Wales, the United Kingdom, and the queen."

He continued, "Peter Morgan, the writer and showrunner, and I thought this was a story we wanted to tell. And that we wanted to do that with truth and dignity, and also to make sure that it is never forgotten."

While they did not end up filming in Aberfan, Caron said they had some actors who grew up close to the village involved with the show: "We have, as much as possible, been trying to involve the local community."

Madison is the digital deputy editor at ELLE, where she also covers news, politics, and culture. If she’s not online, she’s probably napping or trying not to fall while rock climbing.

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How Queen Elizabeth's Reaction to the Aberfan Mining Disaster Became Her Biggest Regret

The 1966 disaster features prominently in season three of The Crown .

On October 21, 1966, the students and teachers of Pantglas Junior School in Aberfan, a small village in Wales, were about to begin their lessons when disaster struck. A nearby "spoil tip" (or surplus of mining waste) collapsed on a school, burying everyone trapped inside in an avalanche of slurry, and eventually killing 116 children and 28 adults.

This tragedy, and the Queen's delayed response to it, are at the heart of the third episode of The Crown 's third season . Here's the real story behind the drama on screen.

Aberfan is said to be the Queen's biggest regret.

While the Queen was made aware of the tragedy shortly after it happened, she waited eight days to visit the Welsh community, a delay, which she is said to regret immensely.

"Aberfan affected the Queen very deeply, I think, when she went there. It was one of the few occasions in which she shed tears in public," Sir William Heseltine, who served in the royal press office at the time, revealed in the documentary Elizabeth: Our Queen .

"I think she felt in hindsight that she might have gone there a little earlier. It was a sort of lesson for us that you need to show sympathy and to be there on the spot, which I think people craved from her."

According to Sally Bechdel Smith's biography Elizabeth the Queen , the monarch's caution wasn't a decision made out of coldness, but rather practicality. "People will be looking after me, she said according to Smith. "Perhaps they'll miss some poor child that might have been found under the wreckage."

And despite numerous suggestions that she should make the trip, the Queen stayed resolute in her opinion.

"We kept presenting the arguments," an advisor of the Queen's told her biographer Robert Lacey , "but nothing we said could persuade her."

Instead, the Queen sent her husband Prince Philip. Her brother-in-law Lord Snowdon, traveled there on his own as well.

"When I heard the news of the disaster on the wireless I felt I should be there because I was Welsh and thought the Welsh should stick together. So I just got on a train and went straight down," Snowdon told WalesOnline in 2006, for a story about the 40th anniversary of the tragedy .

He wrote to Princess Margaret, "Darling, it was the most terrible thing I have ever seen."

The Queen finally decided to visit to Aberfan eight days after the disaster.

Despite the monarch's remorse over her initial reaction to to the tragedy, for many survivors, her eventual presence was a comfort.

"If the Queen does regret not coming here straight away, I think that is misplaced," Jeff Edwards, who survived the disaster when he was eight years old, told the South Wales Echo in 2002 . "When she did arrive she was visibly upset and the people of Aberfan appreciated her being here...She came when she could and nobody would condemn her for not coming earlier, especially as everything was such a mess."

In truth, some locals didn't even notice that she wasn't there immediately after the tragedy. There was simply so much else to pay attention to.

"We were still in shock, I remember the Queen walking through the mud," one woman told ITV reporter Penny Marshall . "It felt like she was with us from the beginning."

Generally speaking, the Queen is rarely emotional in public, instead maintaining a stereotypical British stiff upper lip. But in Aberfan, she let her guard down, even crying a little.

“The one thing I recall about the Aberfan disaster was the arrival of the Queen and how it made her cry,” Sir Mansel Aylward said in 2012.

Aylward was a doctor who had come to Aberfan to help identify the bodies of the children. His cousins had died in the school.

“For the Queen to do what she did, to show sympathy in the way that she did with the people she had only just met, must’ve been very difficult," he said.

“She was very moved by what she saw. She tried to hold back tears but it did make her cry."

The Queen has since returned to Aberfan four more times.

"The people here admire her and I think they have a strong affinity with her," Coun Edwards, a surviver of the disaster, said in 2002.

In 2016, the Queen sent a personal message, delivered by Prince Charles, to the people of Aberfan to mark the 50th anniversary of the tragedy.

As you come together as a community today to mark fifty years since the dreadful events of Friday 21st October 1966, I want you to know that you are in my own and my family’s thoughts, as well as the thoughts of the nation.

We will all be thinking about the 144 people who died – most of them children between the ages of seven and ten – and the hundreds more who have lived with the shock and grief of that day, summed up by one poet who said simply, “All the elements of tragedy are here.”

I well remember my own visit with Prince Philip after the disaster, and the posy I was given by a young girl, which bore the heart-breaking inscription, “From the remaining children of Aberfan.” Since then, we have returned on several occasions and have always been deeply impressed by the remarkable fortitude, dignity and indomitable spirit that characterises the people of this village and the surrounding valleys. On this saddest of anniversaries, I send my renewed good wishes to you all.

The producers of The Crown worked with survivors of the disaster to ensure that the series handled the topic sensitively.

Edwards told the BBC that he has been in touch with the show's production team, and that he also helped set up meetings for members of the community to discuss the show.

"Following these meetings the production team decided to put on a public meeting which was held earlier this month and at which a dozen or so residents turned up and they outlined their proposals to them," Edwards said in September of last year.

The producers also released a statement about the show's portrayal of the disaster, "The third season of The Crown will cover the major historical events of Elizabeth II's reign from 1963-1977 and all strongly felt the Aberfan disaster and the events that followed must be included, especially as it continues to hold a deep resonance for the nation and the Queen herself. "

The statement continues, "As producers, we feel a responsibility to remain true to the memory and the experience of the survivors, so have met with community leaders, as well as the people of Aberfan on a number of occasions as part of our in depth research and to discuss our approach." They have not filmed in Aberfan; instead, Cwmaman reportedly serves as the backdrop for these scenes.

"It was all very dignified, Olivia Colman is clearly taking her role very seriously," one onlooker told the BBC about the film set .

"There was a very sombre mood. I think everyone involved in the production realizes what an awful tragedy Aberfan was."

The Crown: The Official Companion

Watch the trailer for show's trailer below:

editoriallinks id='0dafde79-bac5-4b8d-90a9-eb62d6fee8ee'][/editoriallinks]

As the digital director for Town & Country, Caroline Hallemann covers culture, entertainment, and a range of other subjects 

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The True Story of Queen Elizabeth’s “Fake Crying” in Aberfan on ‘The Crown’

Yeah...about that.

If you’re reading this it’s too late , I can only assume you’ve reached the point in The Crown season 3 when Queen Elizabeth is having some serious concerns about her inability to cry. The series takes on the queen’s infamously stoic attitude in episode 3, when she visits the site of the tragic Aberfan mining accident (where 116 children were killed) and sheds what—according to the show—was a fake tear. We then see Her Majesty declare there’s something “wrong” with her, before she cries at the end of the episode while listening to a hymn sung by the families who lost their children.

At this point, you’re probably wondering two things: (1) whether the queen really cried at Aberfan and (2) if she’s actually *ever* cried in public. So let’s get right to it—while keeping in mind that the pressure the queen feels to emote in public is *clearly* a byproduct of sexism. Ya don’t see the world questioning why Prince Charles doesn’t cry enough, that’s all I’m saying!

So, did she cry in Aberfan?

Unclear. But you can see the queen’s genuine emotion in this video below, aka the real-life visit that The Crown depicts (they even put Olivia Colman in the exact same outfit):

There don’t seem to be any images of her wiping away a tear (which we see on The Crown ), but there are plenty of photos of her from the day in question:

And you can see that her shock and grief are very real:

No one knows how the queen was feeling in that moment except for her, and it’s somewhat surprising that The Crown would depict Her Majesty feigning grief. Nevertheless, the show has her admit that she fake-cried during a conversation with the prime minister. “They deserved a display of compassion, of empathy, from their queen,” she says. “They got nothing. I dabbed a bone-dry eye and by some miracle no one noticed.”

She then goes on to say, “After The Blitz, when we visited hospitals, I saw what my parents, the king and queen, saw. They wept. I couldn’t....Not just as a child. When my grandmother, Queen Mary, whom I loved very much, when she died, nothing.”

Of course, there’s no way to know if any of this is true, but The Crown still has Queen Elizabeth go on to say, “I have known for some time there is something wrong with me.”

Pretty bold move, writers’ room!

Erm... does the queen cry in public?

YES! But if she didn’t, that wouldn’t mean she’s lacking in empathy, and again, men would never have to deal with this kind of speculatio n. That said, public displays of emotion are pretty rare for the queen. According to The Telegraph , she notably shed a tear in 1997 at the decommissioning ceremony for the Royal Yacht Britannia:

And she was photographed with a tear falling from her eye at a 2002 Remembrance Day Service that took place shortly after her mother’s death.

Most recently, Queen Elizabeth was seen crying earlier this month during the annual Remembrance Sunday service:

In other words, she’s a real human with real feelings. Interestingly, Queen Elizabeth’s former lady-in-waiting Lady Pamela shed some light on the subject , saying, “She had to learn to control all her emotions. You don’t cry in public, you can’t show you are tired, you can’t show you are bored. Your own emotions are entirely not to be considered. And you have to train yourself to smile yet again.”

Hmm, with this in mind , I’m not sure how much the royals are going to appreciate that whole “I have known for some time there is something wrong with me” line....

Mehera Bonner is a celebrity and entertainment news writer who enjoys Bravo and Antiques Roadshow with equal enthusiasm, She was previously entertainment editor at Marie Claire and has covered pop culture for over a decade. 

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How the 1966 Aberfan Mine Disaster Became Elizabeth II’s Biggest Regret

By: Erin Blakemore

Updated: June 29, 2023 | Original: January 4, 2019

The avalanche raced down a steep hill in Aberfan, Wales, sucking everything in its path into the chaos: landscape, buildings, an entire schoolhouse. When David Evans, the owner of a local pub, heard about it from a neighbor, he ran into the street. “Everything was so quiet, so quiet,” he told historian Gaynor Madgewick. “All I could see was the apex of the roofs.”

The avalanche wasn’t snow—it was coal waste that had slid down a rain-saturated mountainside. On October 21, 1966, nearly 140,000 cubic yards of black slurry cascaded down the hill above Aberfan. It destroyed everything it touched, eventually killing 144 people, most of them children sitting in their school classrooms.

The tragedy in Aberfan would become one of the United Kingdom’s worst mining disasters—and it was completely avoidable.

Queen Elizabeth II's Response to the Aberfan Disaster

Despite the magnitude of the calamity, Queen Elizabeth II at first refused to visit the village, sparking criticism in the press and questions about why she wouldn’t go. Finally, after sending her husband, Prince Philip, in her place for a formal visit, she came to Aberfan eight days after the disaster to survey the damage and speak with survivors. Nearly four decades later, in 2002, the queen said that not visiting Aberfan immediately after the disaster was “her biggest regret.”

The Foundation of the Disaster

The foundation of the disaster was laid nearly a century before, when the Merthyr Vale Colliery, a coal mine, was opened in the area. Wales had become famous for coal mining during the Industrial Revolution , and at its peak in 1920, 271,000 workers labored in the country’s coal pits. By the 1960s, coal mining was in decline, but was still a lifeline for some 8,000 miners and their families around Aberfan.

Coal mining creates waste, and the waste rock was dumped in an area called a tip. Merthyr Vale had seven tips. By 1966, the seventh tip, which was begun in 1958, was about 111 feet high and contained nearly 300,000 cubic yards of waste. It was precariously placed on sandstone above a natural spring, which lay on the steep hill above the village.

As mining progressed, the heaps of waste grew and grew. In 1963 and 1964 residents and local officials had raised concerns about the seventh tip’s location with the National Coal Board, which owned and operated the mine. They were especially worried because the tip was located right above Pantglas Junior School, which was attended by about 240 students.

Those concerns were all too prescient, but the National Coal Board ignored them. “The threat was implicit,” notes the BBC: “make a fuss and the mine would close.”

Devastation and Rescue Efforts of the Aberfan Disaster

On October 21, students at Pantglas were only scheduled for a half day of school ahead of a mid-term break. It had been a rainy day, but that wasn’t unusual—not only had it been raining for weeks, but the area got at least 60 inches of rain annually. The children had just arrived at school when it happened: Saturated by rain, the fine coal material piled on the hill liquefied into a thick slurry and began hurtling toward them.

It happened so quickly that nobody could prepare. Students heard a sound like a jet plane. It was black quicksand burying everything in its path. The slurry hit the school, slamming its walls to rubble and pouring in through the windows. Pipes burst and water began flowing outside the school.

Down the hill, the town, which had begun to flood from streams clogged with debris, sprang into action. Emergency workers and volunteers ran up toward the school to help. “Civil defense teams, miners, policemen, firemen and other volunteers toiled desperately, sometimes tearing at the coal rubble with their bare hands, to extricate the children,” reported   The New York Times . “Bulldozers shoved debris aside to get to the children. A hush fell on the rescuers once when faint cries were heard in the rubble.”

Alix Palmer, a young journalist on his first major assignment, went to Aberfan to report on the rescue efforts. It had been hours since anyone had been pulled out alive. “The fathers straight from the pit were digging,” he wrote to his mother afterward. “No one had yet really given up hope, although logic told them it was useless.”

How Many People Died During the Aberfan Disaster?

In the aftermath, the true scale of the disaster became clear. One hundred and forty-four people were dead, 116 of them children. Half of the village’s children had been killed. “All our friends were gone,” Jeff Edwards, who survived the disaster pinned beneath his desk, told the BBC in 2016.

A tribunal later concluded that the National Coal Board was responsible for the disaster after examining 300 exhibits and interviewing 136 witnesses. “The Aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented,” said the tribunal in its report. The disaster was a matter “not of wickedness but of ignorance, ineptitude and a failure in communications,” it wrote.

The Aftermath of Aberfan

Great Britain quickly mobilized on behalf of the people in Aberfan. The Aberfan Disaster Memorial Fund, which was set up on the day of the disaster, raised the equivalent of $16.6 million in modern dollars. The money was used to pay for repairs in the village and the care of those who were injured and bereaved in the disaster.

But the money also had to help pay for the removal of the remaining tips that lurked above the village. The head of the National Coal Board refused to visit Aberfan and parents of children had to prove they were “close” to their children to receive a payment of £500 from the board. The funds for removing the tips were only repaid in 1997—without interest.

Someone else had lingering heartache about the Aberfan disaster: Elizabeth II. Instead of visiting herself, she sent Prince Philip in her stead. “We kept presenting the arguments,” an advisor told biographer Robert Lacey, “but nothing we said could persuade her.” Finally, she had a change of heart and visited eight days after the slide, speaking with village residents and showing poignant grief—an uncharacteristically emotional display for the usually stoic queen.

For the people of Aberfan, the visit was part of the healing process. “They were above the politics and the din and they proved to us that the world was with us and that the world cared,” Marjorie Collins, who lost her eight-year-old son in the disaster, said in 2015. But nothing could make it less bitter to lose a child. “I lost my daughter and we were lucky to save the lad,” an Aberfan father told LIFE in 1967. “No amount of money will fetch any of them back, will it?” 

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History | November 15, 2019

The True Story of the Aberfan Disaster

The 1966 Welsh mining tragedy claimed the lives of 116 children and 28 adults and features heavily in the third season of Netflix’s “The Crown”

Meilan Solly

Associate Editor, History

Jeff Edwards’ primary school teacher had just started the day’s math lesson when an ominous rumble sounded in the distance.

“The next thing I remember was waking up,” he later recalled . “My right foot was stuck in the radiator and there was water pouring out of it. My desk was pinned against my stomach and a girl’s head was on my left shoulder. She was dead.”

Over the next hour and a half, the then-8-year-old Edwards struggled to breathe as his classmates, trapped under a torrent of liquefied coal waste, cried out around him. With every passing minute, he said, “They got quieter and quieter, … buried and running out of air.”

Around 11 a.m., someone spotted a tuft of Edwards’ blonde hair amid the rubble. A fireman used a hatchet to free the young boy from beneath his desk, then passed him along to safety via a human chain . Edwards, the tenth child rescued that morning, would be the last survivor pulled from the debris.

In total, the October 21, 1966, disaster killed 144 people, 116 of whom were students at the Welsh town of Aberfan’s Pantglas Junior School. The tragedy, according to BBC News ’ Ceri Jackson, was a “mistake that cost a village its children”; in the words of a tribunal commissioned to investigate the incident, the deadly accident “could and should have been prevented.”

The Aberfan disaster features heavily in season three of Netflix’s award-winning series “ The Crown ,” which returns to viewers’ screens this Sunday after a two-year absence. To ensure the television biopic portrayed the incident “truthfully and responsibly,” the cast and crew consulted survivors and current residents of Aberfan. Per a statement from the show’s producers, “All strongly felt the Aberfan disaster and the events that followed must be included, especially as it continues to hold a deep resonance for the nation and the queen herself.”

Much like the days that preceded it, the morning of the disaster found Aberfan, a southern Wales village home to some 8,000 coal miners and their loved ones, blanketed in a wet fog. The 240 students enrolled in the school walked to class in the rain, but few were focused on the weather. Instead, the children’s conversations centered on plans for the coming half-term holiday: Following an early afternoon assembly, all students would be dismissed for vacation.

Several years earlier, the local council had contacted the National Coal Board, which ran the nearby Merthyr Vale Colliery mine, to express concerns regarding the spoil tip —a massive pile of accumulated coal waste material removed during mining—situated just above the Pantglas school.

“I regard it as extremely serious as the slurry is so fluid and the gradient so steep that it could not possibly stay in position in the winter time or during periods of heavy rain,” one engineer wrote in a June 1963 letter .

The NCB not only ignored these complaints, but implicitly threatened the town’s livelihood. Per BBC News , the unionized mining giant made its intentions clear: “Make a fuss and the mine would close.”

At the time of the disaster, the tip in question, number seven , rose 111 feet aboveground and contained nearly 300,000 cubic yards of waste. Set atop an underground spring covered by porous sandstone, the heap was precariously placed and, thanks to the recent rainy weather, extremely oversaturated.

At 7:30 a.m., workers assigned to the tip discovered that it had started to slide. Although the crew opted not to move forward with the day’s planned tip operation, they were unable to prevent further slippage, and at 9:15 a.m., a “ glistening black avalanche ” of liquefied coal waste, or slurry, began hurtling toward the village below.

“I thought I was seeing things,” crane driver Gwyn Brown later told investigators . “Then it rose up pretty fast, at a tremendous speed. ... It sort of came up out of the depression and turned itself into a wave—that is the only way I can describe it—down toward the mountain.”

According to History Extra ’s Steve Humphries, the 30-foot-tall “tsunami of sludge” raced down the hill at a speed of more than 80 miles per hour. Sweeping past a canal and an embankment, the landslide tore into the Pantglas Junior School, breaching the walls of four classrooms and trapping those inside in a flood of thick, quicksand-like sludge.

In the immediate aftermath of the onslaught, an eerie silence settled across the area.

“Everything was so quiet,” Cyril Vaughan, a teacher at the nearby senior school, said. “[It was] as if nature had realized that a tremendous mistake had been made and nature was speechless.”

Rubble and water from burst pipes exacerbated the already dire situation. As fireman Len Haggett recounted, rescuers who arrived on the scene found rising waters threatening to engulf 10-year-old Phil Thomas, who had been caught in the sludge as he was walking to school. “The water was rising and coming up to his head,” Haggett said. “We thought he might drown.” But a group of seven firefighters managed to lift the wall that had collapsed on Thomas, and he became one of the few to successfully escape the debris.

Five students survived the disaster thanks to the quick thinking of dinner lady Nansi Williams, who sacrificed herself by shielding them from the sludge with her own body. Another staff member, teacher David Beynon, died while cradling five of his pupils . None of the students in Beynon’s class survived.

Eight-year-old Jeff Edwards, rescued from the rubble around 11 a.m., was the last person found alive. But shocked parents, miners, police officers, firefighters and volunteers continued digging long after the last child’s cry could be heard. As Alix Palmer, a reporter who arrived to survey the mayhem the following day, wrote in a letter to her mother , “Men who had started digging at 9:30 the previous morning were still digging, with shirts off and bodies sweating despite the cold.”

Charles Nunn, a detective tasked with cataloging the bodies brought to the makeshift morgue in Aberfan’s Bethania Chapel, sorted through the deceased’s pockets in search of “a handkerchief, sweets, anything that might help with identification.” Parents walked along the rows of corpses laid on pews, lifting blankets covering the bodies until they spotted a familiar face. Those whose children hadn’t yet been found repeated the ritual daily, leaving the chapel to stand in line once again, “mother relieving father, to keep their place outside waiting in the rain.”

Fifteen days after the landslide, Nunn and his team finally left Aberfan. They had identified 144 bodies, including those of 116 children, 5 teachers and 23 locals whose homes were destroyed by the deluge. According to Johnson, the victims ranged in age from three months to 82; of the 116 students, most were aged 7 to 11.

Episode three of “The Crown”’s new season finds Elizabeth II, played by newly minted Oscar laureate Olivia Colman, debating how best to address the situation . England’s prime minister, Harold Wilson (Jason Watkins), urges her to visit the mining village and console its grieving residents in person, but the queen is reluctant to do so, suggesting her presence would distract from the tragedy at hand. Describing Wilson’s directive to “comfort people” as simply a “show,” she declares, “The Crown doesn’t do that.”

The real Elizabeth didn’t visit Aberfan until eight days after the disaster. Decades later, the queen reportedly deemed this decision her “ biggest regret .”

Elizabeth’s time in the village— biographer Robert Lacey said her “gaunt features, etched with grief, were the more moving for being so clearly genuine”—signaled a shift in the monarchy’s long-held tradition of stoicism. As Jen Chaney writes for Vulture , the moment dramatized in “The Crown” offers “one of multiple hints that modern times are beginning to demand more transparency and outward empathy from the royal family.”

A tribunal tasked with investigating the Aberfan disaster published its findings on August 3, 1967. Over the course of 76 days , the panel had interviewed 136 witnesses and examined 300 exhibits. Based on this evidence, the tribunal concluded that the sole party responsible for the tragedy was the National Coal Board.

“The Aberfan disaster is a terrifying tale of bungling ineptitude by many men charged with tasks for which they were totally unfitted, of failure to heed clear warnings, and of total lack of direction from above,” the investigators wrote in their report . “Not villains but decent men, led astray by foolishness or by ignorance or by both in combination, are responsible for what happened at Aberfan.”

Per History Extra , the NCB’s chairman, Lord Robens, denied all wrongdoing. He attributed the accident to previously unknown springs located below the spoil tip and refuted testimony suggesting the tip had shown signs of slipping in the years prior to the disaster. Both of these claims were at odds with the physical evidence examined by the tribunal.

Photographs and footage of the deadly slurry avalanche generated sympathy across the globe, and in the months following the disaster, donors contributed a total of £1,750,000 . (Today, this equates to around £20 million pounds, or more than $25 million USD.)

Much of this money failed to reach the villagers whose lives had been devastated by the tragedy. As BBC News reports, the commission in charge of distributing the funds allocated £150,000 toward removal of the town’s remaining tips after the NCB refused to cover the costs; meanwhile, the fund’s managers actually considered distributing compensation on the basis of how close parents had been to their deceased children. Thankfully, the commission soon moved away from this plan, instead offering bereaved parents £50 each. Later, this figure was raised to the “generous offer” of £500.

The psychological scars suffered by survivors endured long beyond the 1966 disaster. Edwards, the last child pulled from the razed school, told Wales Online that he relived the trauma in the “days, the weeks and the months after.”

“I was afraid of noise, I was afraid of crowds, I was afraid of going to school,” he added, “and for many years I couldn’t go to school because I was afraid that something would happen to me.”

Melvyn Walker, 8 years old at the time of the disaster, echoed Edwards’ sentiments, saying, “[The sound of children playing] gives me flashbacks. I get very anxious even to this day. If I hear children’s voices it takes me straight back.”

Speaking with ITV News ’ Juliet Brenner on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, Edwards concluded, “Most of my friends in my class died. … Basically we were happy-go-lucky children, looking forward to the half-term holidays, and at 9:15 our childhood stopped.”

Since the Aberfan disaster, the queen has returned to the tiny Welsh town three more times . Although Elizabeth was unable to attend a memorial ceremony held on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, her son Prince Charles read a statement from his mother detailing the “ heart-breaking inscription ” written on a posy given to her by a young girl during the 1966 visit: “From the remaining children of Aberfan.”

“On this saddest of anniversaries,” the queen added, “I send my renewed good wishes to you all.”

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Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's associate digital editor, history.

Pictures of the Queen's visit to Aberfan: How The Crown compares to Elizabeth II's response to the disaster

The third series of Netflix's The Crown has dropped, ushering a new and tumultuous era in British history.

Covering the period between 1964 and 1977 , the latest series starring Olivia Colman includes the Aberfan disaster of 1966, which killed 146 people.

Aberfan, a small mining village in Wales, was devastated when a landslide of muddy coal waste collapsed and engulfed Pantglas Junior School, killing 116 children.

Series showrunner Peter Morgan has written the catastrophe into the storyline, but how much creative licence has he used in doing so?

Here, we take a look at how The Crown compares Queen Elizabeth's response to the disaster.

The Crown cast and their real-life counterparts - In pictures

How does the show compare?

The Queen sparked criticism when she waited over a week to visit the site of the disaster. Instead of travelling to Wales, she sent an official message of condolence and later dispatched Prince Philip to the scene.

The Duke, however, did not actually attend the funerals of those who died in the disaster - according to the Guardian , writer Peter Morgan added this into his script as he thought it was necessary to include a main character in each key scene.

When the Queen eventually visited the site eight days after the catastrophe to meet with those who had lost family members in the landslide, eyewitnesses reported that she briefly became tearful when a young girl presented her with a bunch of flowers - though the precise moment wasn't captured on film. It’s thought to have been the first time the Queen shed tears in public.

In the episode, Colman's character only visits the site following pressure from Prime Minister Harold Wilson after initially dismissing the idea. She also says afterwards that she had merely dabbed a handkerchief at dry eyes in order to give the public a display of royal emotion.

But Harold Wilson's press secretary Joe Haines has slammed this as "absolute nonsense", stating the Queen was able to show real emotion.

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The Aberfan disaster clearly had a huge impact on the Queen. In a book marking her Golden Jubilee, biographer Gyles Brandreth recounted a conversation he had with her private secretary, Martin Charteris. Asked whether she had any regrets over her reign, Charteris reportedly answered: “Aberfan.”

A survivor from the disaster, who was eight-years-old at the time, has hit out at what he thought was a "callous" portrayal of the Queen in the show.

Jeff Edwards, the last child to be rescued live from the school, told the Radio Times : "“[In the episode] she says, ‘We don’t do disaster sites, we do hospitals’. [When] I first saw that, I thought, ‘Well that’s rather callous’. And knowing the person, I don’t think she would have said that, personally.”

He also criticised the decision to show the Queen pretending to wipe her eyes with the handkerchief, saying: "We know she did cry, because she went to Jim Williams’ house – and when she came down from the cemetery she was visibly crying."

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A Welsh Village Embraces Its Bond With the Queen

A disaster at Aberfan, a small Welsh community, almost 60 years ago forged an unusual link between the community and the queen. The atmosphere there today — quiet grief coupled with brief flashes of dissent — encapsulates the national mood.

Moy Road in Aberfan, where an avalanche of coal slurry in October 1966 destroyed a school and several houses, killing 116 children and 28 adults. Credit...

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By Patrick Kingsley

Photographs by Mary Turner

• Sept. 18, 2022

ABERFAN, Wales — As the days count down to Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral on Monday, Gaynor Madgwick has been of two minds: Should she watch the ceremony from her home in South Wales or join the crowds in London to pay her respects in person?

Her brain says stay. Ms. Madgwick, 64, has feared crowds and confined spaces since an avalanche of slurry — a mixture of debris from a coal mine and water — cascaded down the hillside above her village of Aberfan in 1966. One of the worst civilian disasters in contemporary British history, the avalanche crushed the village school, killed 144 villagers, 116 of them children, and left Ms. Madgwick trapped, but alive, beneath the rubble.

Her heart says go. The queen built an unusually strong relationship with Aberfan, beginning in the days after that very disaster and extending through four visits the queen made to the village.

“She was the guardian angel of Aberfan,” Ms. Madgwick said one afternoon last week. “It was a lifelong friendship.”

To many Britons, the death of Queen Elizabeth II — the ever-present backdrop to a century of dramatic social change — has felt like a rug snatched from beneath them, even if they never met or saw her.

The mood in Aberfan, with its rare connection to the queen, is an acute illustration of that feeling.

To be sure, the queen’s death and the resulting pageantry, set against fast-rising costs of living, have also been met by some in Aberfan with relative indifference and even frustration. As in other parts of Britain, it was a jolt that has awakened in some people a sense of alienation from the monarchy; frustration at the central government in London; and a gentle reassessment of national identity that, in Wales, includes calls for an independent Welsh state.

But the dominant mood in Aberfan — a village of gray roofs and sandstone walls in a narrow Welsh valley — is one of quiet loss. The four visits the queen made are an almost unimaginable number for a village of roughly 3,500 residents.

In the process, she made many villagers, hundreds of them still traumatized from the devastation of 1966, feel blessed and recognized by the highest person in the land, even as they felt betrayed by other arms of the British state.

“She looked over us, she protected us, she had sympathy, she had empathy,” Ms. Madgwick said. “The queen has never let us down.”

The queen first arrived in Aberfan, a village built mostly in the 19th century to serve the local coal mine, in October 1966. Her visit was later re-enacted in “The Crown,” the television series inspired by the queen’s life.

Eight days earlier, waste from the mine, dumped for years on the hilltop above the village, had suddenly slipped down after a period of heavy rainfall. It was shortly before 9:15 a.m. on the last day before the school year’s half-term break, and the students, aged 6 to 11, had only just arrived.

Ms. Madgwick was 8 at the time. As her class began a math lesson, a wave of debris — almost 10 yards high in places, and roughly the volume of 15 Olympic swimming pools — thundered through the school and the houses near it, killing just under half of the children there that day.

Ms. Madgwick survived, her leg broken by a dislodged radiator. Her sister and brother, Marilyn and Carl, both died.

The scale of the disaster quickly made it a moment of national introspection and trauma, and the queen soon decided to visit.

One of the biggest regrets of her reign was that she did not go sooner, a leading aide later said , and some villagers say the eight-day delay rankled the community at the time. But today, the residents largely remember her arrival as a moving gesture of solidarity from someone they never expected to lay eyes on.

Citing eyewitnesses, villagers say she briefly cried after receiving a bouquet of flowers from survivors — immortalizing her in village folklore by appearing as a mortal.

“When I close my eyes, I can see her,” said Denise Morgan, 67, who lost a sister in the disaster and was among the crowd that welcomed the queen.

“She didn’t come as a queen — she came as a mother,” Ms. Morgan said. “The loss, and the anguish, was just etched on her face.”

That alone would have been enough to guarantee the queen a place in the folklore of most villages. But she returned in 1973 to open a community center, in 1997 to plant a tree on the site of the disaster, and in 2012 to open a new school.

Over the years, she also hosted wives, mothers and sisters of the victims at Buckingham Palace, heard recitals by a choir led by male relatives of the victims, and gave chivalric honors to several villagers. The connection lasted until even the day before she died, when teachers at the new school opened a letter that courtiers had sent its students on the queen’s behalf.

Throughout those decades, changes to the economy and social fabric of Aberfan epitomized wider shifts in the country at large. The coal mine, once the hub of the community and driver of the local economy, shut — along with hundreds of mines across Britain. That drove many people to find work outside the village, often in the service industry, thinning out communal life. Several chapels and churches closed, amid a wider drop in religious belief, as did the village tailor shops and hardware store.

The pivot from a coal economy “ripped the heart out” of the community, said Dai Powell, 61, a former miner and a childhood friend of several disaster victims. “Now we don’t want coal; it’s basically destroying the planet,” Mr. Powell added. “But it was livelihoods, wasn’t it?”

There were other costs as well. Nearly half of the survivors were found to have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to research published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Other wings of the British state angered the village by refusing to prosecute any coal industry officials for negligence. Successive governments also declined to cover the whole cost of removing other dangerous slurry tips near the village, forcing villagers to dip into donations intended for survivors, until they were finally fully reimbursed in 2007.

But the queen’s concern for Aberfan meant that she was seen as separate from the state’s indifference, despite being its titular head.

Elsewhere in Britain, people have debated whether the queen could really ever rise beyond politics, given the monarch’s interest in maintaining her own role in Britain’s political system. But in Aberfan, there was less doubt.

“There’s no political agenda there,” said Jeff Edwards, 64, the last child to be rescued from the rubble. “The queen is above all that.”

In Aberfan, most people expressed sympathy for her family and respect for her sense of duty. But there are those, particularly among young generations, who have had a more ambivalent response to the queen’s death.

For some, the accession of King Charles III — as well as the abrupt appointment of his son William to his former role of Prince of Wales — is more problematic.

“I should be Prince of Wales, I’m more Welsh than Charles or William,” said Darren Martin, 47, a gardener in the village, with a laugh. Of the queen, he said: “Don’t get me wrong, I admire the woman. But I do think the time has come for us in Wales to be ruled by our own people.”

The abruptness of the queen’s death was a psychological jolt that has prompted, in some, a rethinking of long-held norms and doctrines.

“If things can change drastically like that, why can’t things change here?” asked Jordan McCarthy, 21, another gardener in Aberfan. “I would like Welsh independence.”

Of a monarchy, he added: “Only if they’re born and raised in Wales — that’s the only king or queen I’ll accept.”

Generally, though, the mood in Aberfan has been one of quiet mourning and deference. The local library opened a book of condolence. Villagers gathered in the pub to watch the new king’s speeches and processions. Some left bouquets beside the tree planted by the queen.

On Monday night, a men’s choir, founded by grieving relatives half a century ago, gathered for their biweekly practice. Proud Welshmen, they were preparing for their next performance — singing songs and hymns, some of them in Welsh, on the sidelines of the Welsh rugby team’s upcoming game.

But halfway through, the choir’s president, Steve Beasley, stood up.

“We all know about the queen,” Mr. Beasley said. “Please stand up for a minute’s silence.”

Patrick Kingsley is the Jerusalem bureau chief, covering Israel and the occupied territories. He has reported from more than 40 countries, written two books and previously covered migration and the Middle East for The Guardian. More about Patrick Kingsley

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The True Story of the Aberfan Disaster in The Crown Season 3

While historically based shows often play loose with facts, the subject of The Crown ’s season-three episode “ Aberfan ” is all too real. In the episode, school children run outside in the rainy Welsh weather while a tall and forbidding hill of coal waste looms in the background. The next day, that hill collapses, sending around 300,000 cubic yards of coal slurry directly into the path of Pantglas Junior School and all the children and teachers inside.

The actual Aberfan disaster of October 21, 1966, killed 144 people; 116 of them were children. The Crown captures the awful scope of the tragedy — and how, infamously, Queen Elizabeth delayed her visit to Aberfan in the aftermath — but still, the story of the yearslong neglect that led to the disaster isn’t fully told.

What looks at first to be a Welsh mountain is in fact a spoil tip, a giant pile of accumulated waste material removed during mining. The mine in question, Merthyr Vale, was founded in 1869, and this particular tip had been created eight years earlier. Upon its collapse, 111 feet of extremely fine coal waste went crashing directly into Pantglas. If you’re wondering if anyone had voiced concerns over the danger of a spoil tip being located directly above a school — yes, they had. In 1963, just three years before the disaster, a letter was written to the National Coal Board discussing the “ danger from coal slurry being tipped at the rear of the Pantglas Schools .” Although previous tip slides happened in 1944 and 1963, as of 1966, no colliery inspector had visited Aberfan in four years.

It all seems shocking: Multiple previous tip slides, public fears about the tip collapsing, and still no inspection of the mines? But when viewed in the context of Welsh mining in the 1960s, the reasons for the neglect become clear. At the time, oil was quickly outpacing coal as an energy source that was both cheap and plentiful. While the National Union of Mineworkers was strong, the number of miners shrank from 583,000 to 283,000 between 1960 and 1970. Approximately one mine was closing every nine days, and with them, people’s livelihoods. Miners, engineers, and others involved with Merthyr Vale were aware that if water got into the base of a spoil tip, it became unstable and could collapse — and the National Coal Board had placed this tip partly above underground water springs. Despite all this knowledge, it was not drained. In 1965, a senior Coal Board official claimed that if tipping ended, coal mining would end. This deliberate avoidance of the industry’s inevitable decline cost 144 people their lives.

Did Elizabeth II wait eight long days to visit Aberfan, like she does in The Crown ? Yes. While the queen’s oft-portrayed personal diary is on display throughout the episode, her real diaries are private, and there is no way of knowing what she wrote or thought about in the days following the tragedy. Tony Snowdon drove down in the middle of the night, arriving at 2 a.m. Prince Philip came down the next day. The queen is reported to have initially resisted because of a worry that people would be looking after her instead of looking for the missing children. This concern is conveyed in “Aberfan,” along with the idea that the queen has a difficult if not impossible time feeling emotion, although the latter is obviously harder to factually corroborate.

While there are some reports that delaying her visit to Aberfan is the greatest regret in the queen’s life , survivors like Jeff Edwards, who was 8 years old when the disaster happened, harbor no blame: “She came when she could and nobody would condemn her for not coming earlier, especially as everything was such a mess,” he said in a 2002 interview.

In the aftermath of the disaster, a tribunal was held and the blame laid squarely on the National Coal Board, which was ordered to pay the victims’ families. (Their opening offer was £50, but they wound up paying £500 to each family.) Merthyr Vale itself stayed open a further 23 years until finally closing in 1989. The survivors of Aberfan were subsequently shown to suffer from PTSD , including nervousness, difficulty sleeping, and social isolation. The effects of this complete neglect of safety standards, down to a basic inspection, are thereby felt decades after the initial tragedy.

The queen has returned to Aberfan throughout her reign, including trips in 1973 to open a community center and in 1997, with Prince Philip, to plant a tree at the Aberfan Memorial Garden. In 2016, on the 50th anniversary of the disaster, she sent a note to the people of Aberfan: “I well remember my own visit with Prince Philip after the disaster, and the posy I was given by a young girl, which bore the heart-breaking inscription ‘From the remaining children of Aberfan’.”

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The Real Story Behind the 1966 Aberfan Disaster, Depicted in The Crown Season 3 

By Emma Specter

Warning: This story contains spoilers for season three of The Crown .

If you’re all caught up on The Crown , you might have been somewhat shaken by the third episode of season three . Titled “Aberfan,” the episode gives the viewer a look inside the catastrophic collapse that devastated the community of Aberfan, South Wales, in 1966. The disaster is depicted in detail on The Crown , with the show providing a look at normal life in Aberfan to underscore the severity of the collapse’s effect on the town.

Younger viewers might not know that the tragedy was very real; its effects are still being felt by Aberfan survivors, some of whom still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. If the Aberfan episode of The Crown ’s third season moved you, here is the true story about the real-life disaster.

What led to the disaster in Aberfan?

A colliery spoil tip, or a pile of waste material removed during mining, was overlaid atop a natural spring on a mountain slope in Aberfan. Heavy rain led the buildup of water in the tip to turn into a slurry and slide downhill, with fatal consequences.

How many people died?

The slurry caused by the spoil tip’s collapse engulfed the nearby Pantglas Junior School, and the resulting death toll was high; 116 children—half the village’s children, in total—and 28 adults were killed, and an additional six adults and 29 children were injured. “Civil defense teams, miners, policemen, firemen and other volunteers toiled desperately, sometimes tearing at the coal rubble with their bare hands, to extricate the children,” reported the New York Times .

Who was responsible for the catastrophe?

There are several possible answers to this question, but the tip was the official responsibility of the National Coal Board. An official inquiry chaired by Lord Justice Edmund Davies criticized the NCB and its chair, Lord Robens, for not being transparent about their knowledge of the presence of water springs on the hillside, but there was no official censure regarding the landslide. However, the disaster was seen as symptomatic of the monarchy not being sufficiently invested in Wales.

Did Queen Elizabeth II really fail to respond?

Not quite—as pictured on The Crown , the queen sent a message of support to the victims—but she didn’t actually visit Aberfan until eight days after the disaster, sending Prince Philip in her place shortly after the collapse occurred. As seen on The Crown , the queen was criticized for not visiting the site of the tragedy earlier, and these criticisms appeared to stay with her; in 2002 it was reported that the queen had told her former private secretary that not visiting Aberfan immediately after the disaster was “her biggest regret.”

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The Queen's special link with Aberfan born from tragedy

Her Royal Highness has returned to visit a number of times since the tragedy

• 18:41, 8 SEP 2022
• Updated 15:24, 9 SEP 2022

It was eight days after the horrific events at Aberfan that the Queen, then aged 40, arrived to see the devastation herself.

Seeing the impact of the tragedy first hand started a lifelong link between the Queen and the community. As well as that visit in 1966, days after the tragedy, she visited again in 1973, 1997 and 2012. She sent a heartfelt message to a commemorative event in 2016.

During her visit, she was handed a posy from a young girl which she described 50 years later as "heart-breaking". The inscription attached read: "From the remaining children of Aberfan".

She pledged to never forget the community which lost 28 adults and 116 children in a mining disaster which devastated the community.

On her first visit, she spoke to Elaine Richards, one of several bereaved parents and in their conversation the Queen promised to return when the school was rebuilt.

In 2012, then aged 92, Mrs Richards was there to see Her Majesty return to meet her promise.

“It has been a wonderful day, a great privilege to be here and an honour that the Queen remembered to come back,” she said.

“She promised me 44 years ago that she would open the school when it is built and she is here today. It is a very emotional day, I had to be coaxed to come here to remember the little ones who died."

Her loyalty is something that members of the community have spoken about meaning a lot.

In 2015, Marjorie Collins, who lost her son Wayne, nine, in the tragedy, told ITV News: "People were very pleased she came her and we feel honoured she came here. I know it's the sort of tragedy that doesn't happen every day but she came as soon as she could. She did feel very, very much over this."

Another mother told ITV that no one judged the queen for her delayed response. "We were still in shock, I remember the Queen walking through the mud," she said. "It felt like she was with us from the beginning."

Jeff Edwards, who at the time of the 2012 visit was leader of Merthyr Tydfil Council and one of the last people to be dragged from the wreckage, said that it was a challenge to keep his emotions in check during the visit.

“It just shows Her Majesty’s commitment to the community and what a wonderful way to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee, having the Queen herself come to the village," he said at the time.

He also revealed she had made a personal donation to be given to the Aberfan and Merthyr Vale Youth and Community project, set up in the tragedy’s aftermath. “I think Aberfan is a special place for her," he said.

But, there was criticism of the amount of time it took for her to visit in 1966.

Prince Philip attended Aberfan on October 22. The Queen joined him for a second visit on October 29, 1966. British Pathe footage of her visit shows her walking through the streets, surrounded by tens of people, meeting residents including young children, and shaking their hands. She is seen walking past the tends of floral bouquets, laying her own solemnly. She is seen looking up at the hill side, from where the coal slipped, causing such unimaginable devastation.

According to Sally Bechdel Smith's biography Elizabeth the Queen she said according to Smith. "Perhaps they'll miss some poor child that might have been found under the wreckage."

And despite numerous suggestions that she should make the trip, the Queen stayed resolute in her opinion.

"We kept presenting the arguments," an advisor of the Queen's told her biographer Robert Lacey, "but nothing we said could persuade her."

In a WalesOnline piece published in 2006 , the events of those days were recounted. "As the day progressed and the full extent of the disaster became known, leading political figures let it be known that they wanted to come to Aberfan. Those on the scene let it be known that it would be better if they kept away for at least a few days. The last thing they wanted was politicians swamping the area.

"The Queen was informed of the tragedy and asked if it would help if she came to share the grief of her people. Prince Philip came as an advance party on the Saturday morning and quietly moved among the villagers offering words of condolence before returning to Buckingham Palace and telling Her Majesty it would be more appropriate for her to wait.

"When she did eventually visit Aberfan, she was visibly moved and several people told me later that she had said exactly the right things to them when they met."

British royal author Penny Junor, 70, has suggested the Queen was far from apathetic towards the tragedy and 'showed her humanity' to the locals in a quiet manner.

In an ITV programme, she said: 'When she actually arrived she spoke with families and there was one woman who'd lost seven members of her family. The Queen just sat with her, quietly, saying nothing, for half an hour. That was the Queen showing her humanity."

The delay is something those who worked in the royal household at the time, said was a source of regret.

In the documentary Elizabeth: Our Queen, Sir William Heseltine, who served in the royal press office at the time, said: "Aberfan affected the Queen very deeply, I think, when she went there. It was one of the few occasions in which she shed tears in public.

"I think she felt in hindsight that she might have gone there a little earlier. It was a sort of lesson for us that you need to show sympathy and to be there on the spot, which I think people craved from her."

Harold Wilson's press secretary Joe Haines said the dramatised version of her visit in Netflix drama The Crown where the Queen only dabbed a handkerchief at dry eyes in order to give the public a display of royal emotion was "absolute nonsense".

And in a book marking her Golden Jubilee, biographer Gyles Brandreth recounted a conversation he had with her private secretary, Martin Charteris. Asked whether she had any regrets over her reign, Charteris reportedly answered: “Aberfan.”

The anger at the representation was echoed by Jeff Edwards, the last child to be rescued alive from the school. He told the Radio Times : "“[In the episode] she says, ‘We don’t do disaster sites, we do hospitals’. [When] I first saw that, I thought, ‘Well that’s rather callous’. And knowing the person, I don’t think she would have said that, personally.

"We know she did cry, because she went to Jim Williams’ house – and when she came down from the cemetery she was visibly crying."

As well as the 2012 visit, she returned in 1973 at the opening of the new community centre in the village, laying a wreath in the memorial garden on the school's former site. Speaking at the opening of the centre, she said: "It stands as a symbol of the determination that out of the disaster should come a richer and fuller life."

She said at the time she was "most impressed" by what the community had achieved.

Then in 2016, on the 50th anniversary of the disaster, a message from the Queen was delivered by the Prince of Wales where she said she remembered her visit well and how on her subsequent visits she has been touched by the "remarkable fortitude, dignity and indomitable spirit that characterises the people of this village and the surrounding valleys."

That message read in full: "As you come together as a community today to mark fifty years since the dreadful events of Friday 21st October 1966, I want you to know that you are in my own and my family’s thoughts, as well as the thoughts of the nation. We will all be thinking about the 144 people who died – most of them children between the ages of seven and ten – and the hundreds more who have lived with the shock and grief of that day, summed up by one poet who said simply, “All the elements of tragedy are here.”

"I well remember my own visit with Prince Philip after the disaster, and the posy I was given by a young girl, which bore the heart-breaking inscription, “From the remaining children of Aberfan.”

"Since then, we have returned on several occasions and have always been deeply impressed by the remarkable fortitude, dignity and indomitable spirit that characterises the people of this village and the surrounding valleys.

"On this saddest of anniversaries, I send my renewed good wishes to you all."

To get the latest email updates from WalesOnline click here.

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The Crown Season 3: The Devastating True Story of the Aberfan Mining Disaster

The queen once said her delayed response to the tragedy was her "biggest regret."

What exactly happened at Aberfan?

On the morning of October 21, 1966, a coal tip on a mountain slope above Aberfan collapsed. A coal tip is essentially a pile of mining waste material, and after several days of heavy rainfall in the area, this tip had become waterlogged and began to sink. The rainwater turned the coal waste into liquid slurry, which spilled out after the tip collapsed and slid down the mountainside, creating an avalanche that buried several buildings in Aberfan, including the Pantglas Junior School. In the end, 144 people were killed; 116 of them were children.

In one of several harrowing accounts in the BBC’s exhaustive oral history of the incident, survivor Jeff Edwards, who was eight years old at the time, recalls his experience inside the buried school. “It was black all around me but there was an aperture of light about 10ft above me,” he said. “I could hear crying and screaming. As time went on they got quieter and quieter as children died, they were buried and running out of air.”

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Per The Independent , concerns had been raised about the danger of the tip’s location long before the disaster, and its placement on an area of ground that sat above underground water springs went against regulations. But the National Coal Board took no action to enforce its own regulations, which could have averted the disaster.

How did Queen Elizabeth II respond?

As depicted in The Crown , the queen was conflicted over how to respond to the disaster. She initially refused to visit Aberfan, a decision that sparked widespread criticism in the press. Per Sally Bechdel Smith’s biography, Elizabeth the Queen , the decision not to visit was motivated by not wanting to distract from the essential rescue work. “People will be looking after me,” Smith reported the queen as saying. “Perhaps they’ll miss some poor child that might have been found under the wreckage.”

When the queen did eventually visit Aberfan eight days after the incident, she became visibly emotional as she surveyed the damage and spoke with survivors. “If the queen does regret not coming here straight away, I think that is misplaced,” Edwards told the South Wales Echo in 2002 . “When she did arrive she was visibly upset and the people of Aberfan appreciated her being here. She came when she could and nobody would condemn her for not coming earlier, especially as everything was such a mess.”

In 2002, the queen described her delayed response to the Aberfan disaster as “her biggest regret.” In 2016, the queen sent a personal message —delivered by Prince Charles, who is Prince of Wales—to Aberfan to mark the 50th anniversary of the disaster.

How was Antony Armstrong-Jones involved?

While The Crown takes some liberties with royal characters’ involvement in the Aberfan response—Philip is shown attending a funeral that he wasn’t at in real life, for instance—Antony Armstrong-Jones’s emotional visit to the village really happened. “When I heard the news of the disaster on the wireless I felt I should be there because I was Welsh and thought the Welsh should stick together,” Antony told WalesOnline in 2006. “So I just got on a train and went straight down.” He was deeply affected by what he saw in Aberfan and wrote in a letter to Princess Margaret, “Darling, it was the most terrible thing I have ever seen.”

Was the episode filmed in Aberfan?

The Crown didn’t film any scenes in Aberfan, but in the nearby village of Cwmaman. Edwards told the BBC that the show’s producers contacted him in advance to explain their plans, and he in turn put them in touch with community groups so that local residents could share their views. “Following these meetings the production team decided to put on a public meeting which was held earlier this month and at which a dozen or so residents turned up and they outlined their proposals to them," Edwards explained.

“The production team made spectacular efforts to show respect and consideration,” showrunner Peter Morgan told The Guardian . “But I underestimated how raw it still was. The best you have to rely on is your conscience and your own belief in what the truth is.”

Producer Oona O Beirn also revealed to The Guardian that some relatives and neighbors who lost loved ones in the Aberfan disaster took up an invitation to appear as extras in the episode. During the course of filming, they were offered counseling—for the first time in 53 years. “We had a therapist to help all the people who were recreating such a horrific scene,” O Beirn explained. “People who live there are still traumatised, of course, and we found they’d never been offered help before. Now we are trying to arrange more.”

In a statement, the producers of The Crown said , “The third season of The Crown will cover the major historical events of Elizabeth II’s reign from 1963–1977 and all strongly felt the Aberfan disaster and the events that followed must be included, especially as it continues to hold a deep resonance for the nation and the queen herself.

“As producers, we feel a responsibility to remain true to the memory and the experience of the survivors, so have met with community leaders, as well as the people of Aberfan on a number of occasions as part of our in depth research and to discuss our approach.

“We have been made to feel welcome by the residents who have been very helpful in providing insight into one of the most tragic events of the 20th century.”

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The Tragic True Story Behind The Crown 's Aberfan Mining Disaster Episode

Queen Elizabeth II is said to regret delaying her trip.

• On October 21, 1966, a mining accident occurred in the South Wales village of Aberfan.
• The Aberfan disaster killed 144 people, including 116 children.

In its three seasons, The Crown has educated many of its viewers on events that their history books may have skipped, such as the Profumo affair , the Great Smog of 1952 , and the life and death of Princess Alice . "Aberfan," the third episode of season 3, tells the story of a particularly horrifying day in U.K. history: The Aberfan mining disaster, which killed over 100 children at the Pantaglas Junior High School. The Netflix series also attempts to explain why it took eight days for the queen to pay a visit to the site of the tragedy.

Here's what really happened at the Aberfan disaster portrayed on The Crown , and how Queen Elizabeth II reportedly feels about her reaction years later.

How did the Aberfan disaster happen?

It was a Friday morning on October 21, 1966, shortly after 9:00 a.m. In the South Wales coal mining village of Aberfan, students at the Pantglas Junior School had just began their day's lessons after singing the hymn " All Things Bright and Beautiful ," as they did on every other school day before it.

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And then, as a woman who lost both her brother and sister in the disaster told England's Channel 4 News in 2016, there was "just a traumatic loud, loud banging noise, and it just got louder and louder and louder. Something was coming." The approaching sound was in fact a landslide of liquified coal waste descending down a mountain slope above, and it decimated several farm cottages on the slope before it reached the school.

There had been weeks of heavy rainfall in the village, according to The Independent , and rainwater had saturated the colliery tip . For those whose knowledge of mining could fit in a thimble (ahem), a colliery tip is a pile made of spoil—a.k.a. coal mining waste material—and the rain buildup caused that particular colliery tip to collapse. The ensuing slurry engulfed the Pantglas Junior School with sludgy waste too quickly for anyone to stop what happened next.

The disaster killed 116 children and 28 adults.

"I knew as soon as I came out of the class that my sister was gone," Brian Williams, who was 7 years old at the time, told Wales Online . "You only had to look up the top end of the school and it was just...well, it wasn’t there." Jeff Edwards, who was the last child to be lifted from the school's rubble alive after 90 minutes, told the BBC that he "could hear crying and screaming. As time went on they got quieter and quieter as children died, they were buried and running out of air.”

The rescue effort included first responders, and village residents including the coal miners who ran down to help. Welsh journalist John Humphrys told The Telegraph what he saw reporting on the scene: "And there they were when I arrived, their faces still black—save for the streaks of white from the sweat and the tears as they dug and prayed and wept. Most of them were digging for their own children.” Though they continued to dig for a week, no survivors were found after the first day.

The accident was preventable.

Prior to the disaster, Aberfan residents had already voiced concern about the fact that there was essentially an 100-foot tall pile of waste hovering above a school full of young children—even in letters to the National Coal Board (NCB). England's House of Lords launched an inquiry that found the NCB largely responsible for the disaster in a report published the following year. As politician Emlyn Hooson said in 1967 , "It was the unanimous view of the Tribunal that this great tragedy could and should have been prevented, and the responsibility fell fairly and squarely on the great public body, the National Coal Board."

However, the NCB refused to acknowledge their role in the tragedy and pay for the remaining colliery tips above the town to be removed; that money had to be taken out of the Aberfan Disaster Fund. According to the BBC , the NCB also first offered only £50 to each parent of a child lost in the landslide, "before raising it to the 'generous offer' of £500."

Queen Elizabeth II allegedly considers her delayed visit her greatest regret.

Prince Philip visited Aberfan on the day after the tragedy. Her brother-in-law Lord Snowdon, who was of Welsh heritage, headed there early that next morning as well. But the queen decided to delay her own appearance there, despite advice to the contrary. In Elizabeth the Queen , royal biographer Sally Bechdel Smith claims this was because she feared her presence would be a distraction to the rescue efforts. "Perhaps they'll miss some poor child that might have been found under the wreckage," she allegedly said.

As depicted on The Crown , Queen Elizabeth II arrived at Aberfan on October 29, 1966 to tour the site and speak with victim's families. Though The Crown paints Elizabeth's reaction as somewhat callous, with Prime Minister Harold Wilson chastising her for the choice to wait, the queen does look duly rattled in photos of her visit with the grieving villagers (on the show, Olivia Colman's queen claims to have faked it).

Members of her inner circle at the time have said the queen does regret not visiting sooner. "I think she felt in hindsight that she might have gone there a little earlier," Sir William Heseltine, who worked in the royal press office at the time, said in the documentary Elizabeth: Our Queen, according to Town & Country . "It was a sort of lesson for us that you need to show sympathy and to be there on the spot, which I think people craved from her."

Per an account published by the South Wales Echo in 2002, Lord Charteris, the Queen's former private secretary, allegedly confided to British author and broadcaster Gyles Brandreth on the matter: "In a diary Brandreth has compiled to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee year, he recalls a conversation he had with Lord Charteris 10 years ago, asking him if the Queen felt she had ever put a foot wrong - he immediately replied: 'Aberfan.'"

Marjorie Collins, whose 9-year-old son Wayne died in his classroom, told ITV that "people were very pleased that she came here." Queen Elizabeth II has gone back to Aberfan four times since.

Many fans of The Crown say they'd never heard of the Aberfan disaster before.

Despite the horrific scope of the tragedy—and the NCB's despicable lack of response in its wake—the Aberfan disaster is a lesser-known story outside the U.K. Yet those who did know what happened are glad it was shared on The Crown. According to The Guardian , the production team used people who lived in Aberfan at the time, as well as relatives of the deceased, as extras in certain scenes. In an effort to respect their trauma, they were offered counseling by the makers of the show.

"We had a therapist to help all the people who were recreating such a horrific scene," producer Oona O' Beirn told The Guardian. “People who live there are still traumatized, of course, and we found they’d never been offered help before. Now we are trying to arrange more.”

Check out reactions to the Aberfan episode below.

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Samantha Vincenty is the former senior staff writer at Oprah Daily. 

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How the Queen kept her promise to the families of the Aberfan tragedy

• Tuesday 8 September 2015 at 1:19pm

Penny Marshall

Africa Correspondent

Aberfan may be the scene of the Queen’s greatest regret, but those who lived through the disaster in this small Welsh village say it is also the scene of the finest example of her constancy and care.

Video report by Penny Marshall, ITV News Social Affairs Editor

The Queen has always felt she left it too long after the disaster to visit the Welsh mining village and offer comfort to the bereaved.

Her first visit came eight days after the slag heap collapsed on the village school leaving 116 children and 28 adults dead.

She was a young mother then too and the disaster touched her deeply. Those there remember her visit in October 1966.

They remember she was moved to tears at the scene.

But they also say the Queen didn't come late.

"We were still in shock, I remember the Queen walking through the mud," one of the mothers told me. "It felt like she was with us from the beginning."

Elaine Richards lost her nine year old daughter Sylvia in the tragedy and when the Queen visited that October day, she promised she would return to open the new school when one was built.

Now 95, Mrs Richards told me how that had given the village hope; and how much it had meant to her that the Queen kept her promise and did return to open the new school in 2012.

"She kept her promise, she is a very gracious lady," she told me. "Now we have children playing in the village again."

Marjorie Collins’ son Anthony Wayne died in the tragedy too, aged just eight.

She last saw him waving as he disappeared in the early morning mist on his way to school.

She said the Queen’s visits had done more than anything to help heal the community.

"They were above the politics and the din and they proved to us that the world was with us, and that the world cared," she said.

The Queen has now been to visit this small village four times, proving her constancy says Marjorie.

The women who lost their children are now in their 80s and 90s, the same generation as the Queen.

They have watched the Queen grow old as they have grown old; they remember her engagement, her coronation, the birth and marriages of her children.

They feel they have been with her throughout her long reign and that, more importantly, she has always been with them.

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‘The Crown’: What Is the True Story Behind the Aberfan Disaster?

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The Crown Season 3, Episode 3, “ Aberfan ” cuts away from the opulent melodrama of palace life and takes us to one of the worst tragedies in Welsh history: the Aberfan disaster. On October 21, 1966, a coal mining tip atop a mountain overlooking the town of Aberfan, Wales collapsed triggering an avalanche that would swallow an elementary school in the village below. 116 children and 28 adults died in the disaster, which could have been prevented by the National Coal Board.

The tragedy sparked both a national outrage and a tribunal, but for royal watchers, it also marks a key moment in Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. Up until then, the queen always assumed a stiff upper lip in the face of all national tragedies, but her delayed response to the Aberfan disaster inspired criticism. When she finally arrived, eight days after the incident, she had to confront the fact that sometimes people need their monarch to show emotion.

So what happened at Aberfan? Whose fault was the disaster? Did the Queen really cry? How true is The Crown ‘s version of events?

Here’s everything you need to know about the Aberfan disaster as seen on The Crown .

What Really Happened at Aberfan?

To understand what happened at Aberfan, you’ve got to understand how exactly the National Coal Board, which was responsible for managing the coal tips in the region, messed the eff up.

Coal had been mined in Aberfan since the 1910s, but in 1947, Aberfan’s colliery was passed over to the National Coal Board. They were responsible for maintaining the tips and managing them. Aberfan experienced heavier rain fall than usual between 1952 and 1965. So much so, that there was a flooding issue in the Pantglas area of Aberfan village. That’s where the schools were, and residents noted that the flood waters were, well, gross, black, and clearly dripping down from the coal mines. In the early ’60s, there were meetings held between local government and the National Coal Board, and it was ascertained that the Board needed to make improvements to the drainage systems. That’s how bad the flooding had gotten, which also signaled that the tips themselves might not be all that stable.

The National Coal Board knew and acknowledged there was a problem in 1965. The problem was they didn’t get around to fixing it.

On October 21, 1966 at at 9:15 AM, the highest tip, Tip 7, collapsed and swallowed the Pantglas neighborhood. 144 people died, most of them children. While some bodies were saved from the disaster, not a single living soul was recovered after 11:00 AM. The National Coal Board’s negligence was blamed in huge part for the disaster, and Aberfan remains one of the greatest tragedies in Welsh history.

Why Did Queen Elizabeth II Delay Visiting Aberfan? Did the Queen Really Cry at Aberfan?

So over a hundred children die in a horrific accident that could have been prevented by better government intervention and what does the Queen do? Nothing.

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Well, not quite nothing. Prince Philip visited the town in her stead the next day and observed rescue efforts. According to Sally Bedell Smith’s Elizabeth the Queen , while her advisors wanted Elizabeth to visit Aberfan to comfort survivors, she was worried that fuss over her arrival would distract from the rescue effort. However, once she did arrive, she did seem visibly upset over the loss of life, reportedly telling mourning parents, “I’m sorry I can give you nothing at present except sympathy.”

The Crown gives Olivia Colman a monologue where she admits to Harold Wilson that she struggles with emotion. “I have known for some time there is something wrong with me,” she says, implying that she’s maybe…a sociopath? Or at least struggles with processing feelings.

While Colman’s Elizabeth says her eyes were “bone dry,” multiple witnesses at Aberfan saw tears in the real Queen’s eyes, so that’s something.

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Aberfan survivor "uneasy" with The Crown's depiction of the Queen's "callous" reaction to tragedy

Jeff Edwards, who was just eight when he survived the 1966 disaster, says Netflix depicts the Queen as "totally unfeeling" towards the grieving Welsh mining village

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An Aberfan survivor has said he is "uncomfortable" with Netflix's "callous" portrayal of the Queen and her response to the tragedy.

The small Welsh mining village of Aberfan was left devastated when, on 21st October 1966, a coal waste tip suddenly collapsed from the nearby mountain slope. A total of 116 children and 28 adults died, with most of the victims killed when the avalanche of slurry hit Pantglas Junior School.

The Crown season three dedicates an episode to the disaster and its aftermath, including the Queen's visit to Aberfan eight days after the event.

Jeff Edwards was eight years old when the disaster took place, and was the last child to be rescued alive from the school. He has since met Queen Elizabeth II several times during her subsequent visits to the area.

In an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com , Edwards criticised how Netflix depicted the monarch's immediate reaction to the tragedy.

"I thought they portrayed her very, very callously," he said, a few days after watching a preview of the episode.

In the episode, Queen Elizabeth II (Olivia Colman) initially dismisses the suggestion that she should visit Aberfan. After pressure from Prime Minister Harold Wilson (Jason Watkins) and trips to the disaster site by her brother-in-law Lord Snowdon (Ben Miles) and husband Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies), she does eventually travel to Aberfan eight days after the tragedy – but on returning to Buckingham Palace, she admits to Wilson that she had to pretend to weep for the crowd and the cameras.

"(In the episode) she says, 'We don't do disasters sites, we do hospitals'," Edwards recounted. "(When) I first saw that, I thought, 'Well that's rather callous'. And knowing the person, I don't think she would have said that, personally."

But at the end of the episode, the Queen does genuinely weep as she listens to a recording of the hymn sung by the mourners at the victims' burial – a moment which Edwards has praised.

"There's a redeeming feature at the end... I think what they're trying to portray is her upbringing, her need to be not showing, as head of state, any emotion at all. But at the very end of the programme it showed the tears coming down her eyes, which effectively shows that emotional part."

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He added: "Up to that point, she was portrayed as a very callous person. Totally unfeeling. Totally unfeeling."

Edwards also said that the onscreen moment where the Queen "artificially wiped her eyes with her handkerchief" hadn't occurred, asserting that in real life she wept during her first visit to the grieving community, when the granddaughter of the local councillor handed her a posey in private.

He recalled: "We know she did cry, because she went to Jim Williams' house – and when she came down from the cemetery she was visibly crying."

Asked about how he thought the episode would be received by audiences, he said: "I am uneasy about the way in which the Queen was portrayed... I think she came over as a very uncaring person who didn't show her emotions, and in reality that wasn't the case, and isn't the case today."

Edwards added: "I think in terms of the Aberfan perspective itself, it told the story as it happened. All I was uncomfortable with was the callous way in which they portrayed the Queen. That was my only concern about the film."

Netflix told RadioTimes.com: "Producers of The Crown worked closely with the people of Aberfan to research this episode and met a wide range of people with first hand experience of the tragedy, including Jeff Edwards and other community leaders."

While it is a fact that Queen didn't visit the scene of the disaster for eight days we do not feel that this depicts her as either 'callous' or 'totally unfeeling'. We show a monarch who is naturally restrained, while advisors around her question her stoicism in the face of such a terrible disaster.

"We strove to make it clear that her delay in responding to the disaster is one of the greatest regrets of her reign. We state that she has maintained a strong bond with the people of Aberfan for over 50 years, and have heard first hand of the respect and loyalty she commands in the village.

"We have gone to great lengths to depict the days after this tragedy with respect and with a duty of care to the residents. We hope that by bringing this event to a global audience people will have a greater understanding of one of the most tragic events of the Queen’s reign."

The Crown season three is available on Netflix now

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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

The Crown season 3: What happened at the Aberfan disaster?

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The Crown is back on Netflix and season three tackles some of the biggest scandals and catastrophes to rock the royal family from 1963-1977, including the tragic Aberfan disaster .

In Season 3, episode 3 of The Crown, the fictionalised TV show based on history portrays the Aberfan disaster and the Queen’s response to the horrifying catastrophe .

But what actually happened in Aberfan and what was the Queen’s response in reality?

What happened at the Aberfan disaster?

The Aberfan disaster refers to a devastating tragedy that took place in 1966.

Aberfan, a small village in Wales , was rocked to its core when, at 9.15am on October 21, Pantglas Junior School was buried under an avalanche of slurry caused by the collapse of a nearby spoil tip full of surplus mining waste.

The avalanche hit the school when it was full of children and teachers about to start their lessons for the day and sadly, 116 children and 28 adults were killed.

What was the Queen’s response to the Aberfan disaster?

The Queen ’s public reaction to the accident has been known to split opinion, as she did not visit the Welsh community until eight days after the tragedy.

Prince Philip travelled to Aberfan without the Queen the day after the incident, visiting the Welsh village on October 22, 1966.

Princess Margaret’s husband at the time, Lord Snowdon, who will feature prominently in the current season of The Crown , also visited Aberfan of his own accord.

Speaking to WalesOnline in 2006 Snowdon said he felt: ‘the Welsh should stick together’ and because he was Welsh he, ‘just got on a train and went straight down.’

When the Queen did make the journey to Aberfan, those who were there describe her as ‘visibly upset’ by what she saw and many did not criticise her decision to delay her visit.

Jeff Edwards, who survived the disaster when he was eight years old, told the South Wales Echo in 2002: ‘When she did arrive she was visibly upset and the people of Aberfan appreciated her being here…She came when she could and nobody would condemn her for not coming earlier, especially as everything was such a mess.’

According to biographer Sally Bechdel Smith, Queen Elizabeth’s decision to delay her visit to the Welsh village after the disaster was linked to her concern that she would be a potentially fatal distraction to the cause at hand, which was trying to rescue children from the buried school.

”People will be looking after me,’ she said according to Smith. ‘Perhaps they’ll miss some poor child that might have been found under the wreckage.’

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In notes at the end of the third episode of season three of The Crown, it says that the Queen’s slow reaction to visit Aberfan remains ‘one of her biggest regrets as monarch’.

The producers of The Crown have handled the inclusion of the Aberfan disaster in the series incredibly sensitively, and they also released a statement ahead of the new series about how they went about portraying the tragic event in the show:

‘The third season of The Crown will cover the major historical events of Elizabeth II’s reign from 1963-1977 and all strongly felt the Aberfan disaster and the events that followed must be included, especially as it continues to hold a deep resonance for the nation and the Queen herself.’

As producers, we feel a responsibility to remain true to the memory and the experience of the survivors, so have met with community leaders, as well as the people of Aberfan on a number of occasions as part of our in depth research and to discuss our approach.’

The Crown is available now on Netflix UK.

MORE : The Crown season 3: Aberfan disaster portrayal proves hard to watch as viewers praise heartbreaking scenes

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