did queen visit aberfan

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 .

Catching up on previous seasons of The Crown before diving into season five ? If you're in search of information about the real life Aberfan disaster, read on for our story from 2019:

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."

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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.

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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

Senior Associate Digital 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 senior associate digital editor, history.

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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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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 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."

For history buffs, the title card at the beginning of The Crown Season 3 , Episode 3—“Aberfan, Wales”—will provoke an instant sense of dread. But for most viewers, particularly in the United States, this episode will serve as an introduction to one of the most devastating incidents in modern British history. As chronicled in the horrifying episode, the 1966 Aberfan mining disaster killed 144 people, most of them children, and became a moment of public reckoning for the queen. Here’s what you need to know about the real story behind the episode.

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.”

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.”

Emma Dibdin is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who writes about culture, mental health, and true crime. She loves owls, hates cilantro, and can find the queer subtext in literally anything.

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William and Kate visit site of 1966 Aberfan disaster

The prince and princess of wales walked through the aberfan memorial garden to pay respects to those who died when a spoil tip collapsed on a school., article bookmarked.

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The Prince and Princess of Wales have visited the Welsh village of Aberfan , the site of the 1966 disaster in which 144 people, including 116 children, were killed.

William and Kate were led through the Aberfan Memorial Garden on Friday to pay their respects to those who died when a colliery spoil tip collapsed and sent tonnes of ash slurry onto the village below.

The garden sits on the site of former Pantglas Primary School, which was engulfed by the landslide at 9.13am on October 21 1966, just as lessons had begun.

People gathered on the street to greet the royal couple as they arrived.

They were guided around the memorial garden by Aberfan survivor David Davies, a former pupil at Pantglas Primary School, and Professor Peter Vaughan, Lord Lieutenant of Mid Glamorgan.

They met trustees from the Aberfan Memorial Trust who are involved in ensuring the maintenance of the garden, alongside some of the Aberfan Wives group who lost relatives in the disaster.

It is the first time the royal couple has been to the village near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales.

Queen Elizabeth II visited eight days after the tragedy and shortly after a mass funeral had taken place.

Her decision not to visit sooner was said to have been one of the greatest regrets of her reign.

Despite this, mourners gathered to meet her and the bond she made with those she spoke to during that visit on October 29 1966 endured throughout the rest of her life.

In 1974, she opened the garden to commemorate the victims and provide a place for bereaved families, survivors and the community to pay their respects.

She visited again in 1997, with her final trip to Aberfan in 2012 when she opened a new school called Ynysowen Community Primary.

On the 50th anniversary of the disaster, her son Charles – then the Prince of Wales – visited the village and delivered a message from the Queen.

In it she said: “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.”

The disaster was the result of one of seven spoil tips that sat on slopes above the village collapsing.

The one that devastated the village below was created in 1958, stood 111ft high and went against the National Coal Board’s (NCB) rules because it was partly built on ground which had water springs underneath.

After three weeks of heavy rain the slurry slipped down the side of the hill.

An official inquiry into the tragedy eventually blamed the NCB leaders, who had ignored repeated warnings about the tip’s dangerous condition from local residents and Merthyr Borough Council.

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True story behind The Crown's Aberfan episode, as told by the survivors: "I had nightmares for years"

Survivors of the 1966 Aberfan tragedy speak to RadioTimes.com about the disaster that rocked their small Welsh community - and the royal family

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At 9.13 am on the morning of 21st October 1966, a mountain of coal waste collapsed onto Pantglas Junior School in Aberfan, Wales , killing 116 children and 28 adults. It was the last day of school before the half-term holiday.

More than 50 years on, Netflix’s The Crown has dramatised the tragedy and its effect on the nation - and the royal family. RadioTimes.com spoke exclusively to Aberfan survivors Jeff Edwards and Gaynor Madgwick, both schoolchildren at the time of the disaster. This is the full story of what happened at Aberfan that day.

What happened at Aberfan?

In October 1966 a colliery spoil tip collapsed following heavy rain, creating an avalanche that slid directly into the local school and surrounding houses, devastating the small Welsh mining community. At the time of the disaster Jeff Edwards was an eight-year-old schoolboy, with striking white blonde hair. He remembers being in a maths lesson, facing the blackboard and turned away from the class windows.

“It just happened. There was the roar, then black. [I was] knocked out,” he says. The noise of the oncoming avalanche “was like thunder, and the teacher assured the class that it was only thunder. It was like a continuous roar, a thundery noise, very, very loud noise, and then from my perspective the only thing I remember is waking up with all this material around me.”

When Jeff woke up, surrounded by debris, “there was just shouts and screams of kids in the classroom”.

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“I had a dead girl next door to me, and she was on my shoulder. So, that's why I had nightmares for years after, this kid on my shoulder, you know? I know who the girl was, I never revealed who she is, obviously, because of her parents, but yes I did [know her].”

Jeff, who for decades after struggled with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, was the last child to be rescued alive from the building. He recalls that it was largely thanks to his distinctive white hair that he was spotted by rescuers.

“I was lucky because the only reason I survived was the fact that I had a pocket of air around me. The others who died, they either died through physical trauma — being killed by falling debris or the tip itself — or from asphyxiation, being buried in the rubble, [and] they couldn't breathe. It was just fortunate for me that there was a pocket of air around me, so it enabled me to breathe,” he explains. “And how I got picked out, my white hair was, when they were digging around they saw my white hair. And they dug around me and got me out.”

After he was pulled out of the rubble, “the firemen came, and they dug me out of where I was, they then passed me in a human chain from one to another, out into the yard where we were seen by medics”.

By that time all the ambulances were gone, so Jeff was taken to hospital by local grocer Tom Harding in his light blue van: “They had difficult in starting it because he'd parked it in the lane adjacent to the school and there was water coming down from the cliff, so they actually had to push the van to make it go.”

How many died at Aberfan?

The school and 19 houses were engulfed by the coal waste, killing 116 children and 28 adults in the real Aberfan disaster. Many of the victims, including 81 children and one adult, were buried on 27th October in one grave during a mass funeral, which is shown during The Crown’s Aberfan episode.

Jeff, who liaised with Netflix ahead of filming, attended an advance screening of the episode alongside fellow Aberfan survivor David Davies (Jeff says Netflix provided an onsite psychologist for them both). Of the mass burial scene, he says: “I thought the grave site was very emotional, and I think the enormity of it, when the cameras pan down the whole of the graves, given the enormity of the situation, I think that was a very emotional part of the film.”

However, survivor Gaynor Madgwick was nervous about watching the burial scene. Madgwick was eight years old when she was trapped inside the school, later spending months in hospital due to injuries; she lost her brother and a sister during the tragedy.

Asked whether she was anxious about seeing the episode, she says: “Oh God, yes, in one way because obviously it shows that burial — obviously my siblings were involved in that, so it'd have to be done very, very tastefully.”

Which members of the royal family visited Aberfan? When did the queen visit?

Lord Snowden (Princess Margaret’s then-husband) and Prince Philip both visited Aberfan before Queen Elizabeth II travelled to Aberfan.

The Queen arrived eight days after the disaster — the first of four trips she was to make to the village. Her delay in visiting was later reported to be her biggest regret during her reign.

Survivor Gaynor says her mother and sister were both against The Crown dramatising the tragedy, but that she believes that “the Queen's involvement with Aberfan, and her commitment throughout her reign” to the community deserves screen time. “I think it's really important to actually bring that programme and to actually show what effect it had on the Queen at that time,” she says.

However, Jeff has criticised The Crown’s “callous” depiction of the Queen ( played by Oscar winner Olivia Colman ), who in the episode initially discourages the idea of a royal visiting a disaster site like Aberfan, and later pretends to cry for the cameras during her trip.

"She says [in the episode], 'We don't do disasters sites, we do hospitals'," says Jeff, who has met the monarch during her various visits. "[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."

"There's a redeeming feature at the end," he adds, "[But] up to that point, she was portrayed as a very callous person. Totally unfeeling. Totally unfeeling [towards the Aberfan community]."

Netflix told RadioTimes.com: "While it is a fact that Queen didn't visit the scene of the disaster for 8 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 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."

How accurate is The Crown’s Aberfan episode?

Although the episode remains largely faithful to the events leading up to and after the tragedy at Aberfan, there were bound to be instances of artistic licence and some deliberate decisions have been made to change certain locations or moments.

Asked whether there were any historical inaccuracies in the episode, Jeff Edwards said that there had been a few instances he had spotted. During the mass burial scene “there should have been white coffins instead of wooden” (as the majority of victims buried were children) while he says that Prince Philip didn't attend the funeral service — he actually visited Aberfan again on 28th October, alongside the queen (which isn't shown in the series).

• Meet the cast & characters of The Crown season 3
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Jeff adds that “the [coal] pit itself was in the middle of the valley and not on top of the hill” and a tipping mechanism, rather than buckets, was used to transport material.

Jeff also stressed that the on-screen moment where the Queen "artificially wiped her eyes with her handkerchief" didn't occur, claiming instead that the monarch did shed genuine tears when a young Aberfan survivor and granddaughter of the local councillor handed her a posey: "She did show outward emotion."

Finally, the episode also features a heart-rending scene in which the schoolchildren return home and practise the hymn ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’ for an end-of-term assembly. Although Jeff says that the scene was artistic licence, “it was effective” as “that song was always sung at the school”.

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What was the hymn sung during the Aberfan funeral scene?

On the hilltop cemetery, where most of the children were buried on 27th October 1966 in a mass burial, mourners and members of the congregation were able to fight back tears to sing ' Jesu, Lover Of My Soul ,' by Charles Wesley (as heard in The Crown episode).

The first verse goes:

'Jesu, lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly, While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high: Hide me, O my Savior, hide, Till the storm of life is past; Safe into the haven guide; O receive my soul at last!'

Real-life history behind The Crown season 3

• Was the Queen's art adviser Anthony Blunt really a Soviet Spy?
• Did the Queen visit Winston Churchill before his death – and attend his funeral?
• Did people really think Prime Minister Harold Wilson was a Soviet agent?
• Did Princess Margaret charm (and kiss) President Lyndon B Johnson?
• Inside Margaret's affair with Roddy Llewellyn and the collapse of her marriage
• "I had nightmares for years": The real-life story behind The Crown's Aberfan episode, as told by the survivors
• The story of Philip's mother – and her extraordinary life
•  The real story behind the 1969 Royal Family documentary
• Did Prince Charles get sent to learn Welsh for the Investiture? 
• Was there a plot to overthrow Harold Wilson – in a coup led by Lord Mountbatten?
• How Prince Philip met the Apollo 11 astronauts 

The Crown season three will air on Netflix on Sunday 17th November 2019 .

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

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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How The Crown Recreated the Tragedy of Aberfan

The team behind the Emmy-nominated episode on depicting a painful moment in British history.

On October 21, 1966, a coal tip flooded by heavy rains collapsed in Aberfan, Wales, engulfing parts of the village, including the Pantglas Junior School, and killing 116 children and 28 adults. The disaster was dramatized for the first time onscreen in the third season of The Crown ; the episode, titled “Aberfan,” details the day leading up to the tragedy and its aftermath, as the town's surviving inhabitants dig through the rubble and eventually receive a visit from Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman). It’s a harrowing and palpably realistic hour of TV, existing almost as a stand-alone film in its intensity and unusual plot structure. It’s no surprise, then, that many of the series crew are nominated for an Emmy for the episode.

“This stepped way outside The Crown’s comfort zone,” explains Martin Childs, the show’s production designer, who is nominated for Outstanding Production Design for a Narrative Period or Fantasy Program. “This is something happening massively somewhere other than one of the palaces. It’s a story that really needed telling. It would be completely wrong to call it a breath of fresh air, but it was a breath of some air that gave the audience something to look at other than what they are used to.”

“There’s something so valuable in this episode,” adds costume designer Amy Roberts. “Doing a miner or a miner’s wife well is as important as doing the queen well. And, actually, as interesting.”

Childs, Roberts and cinematographer Adriano Goldman tell ELLE.com about the detail, responsibility and emotion involved with pulling off “Aberfan.”

Reimaging Aberfan in 1966

Childs and his team compiled about 40 sets for the “Aberfan” episode, including the village itself. Instead of filming in the actual town of Aberfan, production traveled to Cwmaman, a former coal mining town in the heart of Wales. They used existing rows of homes, and the team turned the house facades back to their ‘60s iterations by repainting doors, replacing windows, and modifying anything that looked too modern. They also altered any visible interiors, adding in drapes and painting walls. All modifications were supported by town's current inhabitants, who wanted to see the story told. The subtle pops of red throughout the village, which echo the queen’s brick-colored ensemble, were purposeful.

“I very much wanted it to be the colors of the earth,” Childs notes. “I wanted the village of Aberfan to be something part of nature and part of the earth, and then this dreadful thing happens to it. It’s a way of contrasting with the royal household and the palaces.”

The schoolhouse was built twice, once around an existing structure in Cwmaman and then as a destroyed version at London’s Elstree Studios. Childs copied real items from the Pantglas Junior School classroom, including the desks, from photographs documenting the objects dug out of the rubble.

“People walked into that schoolroom after we’d dressed it and said, ‘This takes me back to the 1960s,’ Childs says. “It’s all in the detail. The biggest challenge was respecting the memory of the people who had lived through this and the memory of those who had died.”

The inhabitants of the town, many of whom were played by Welsh locals, also needed to feel authentic to the time and place. Roberts focused on clothes from the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, rather than 1966, because not everyone would've owned something current. The colors are muted to reflect the weather and somber tone, with many of the pieces un-ironed or folded with haphazard creases.

“I didn’t want them to think they were costumes for a second,” explains Roberts. “Everybody felt that we had to be massively respectful, more than anything.” She continues, “It’s difficult when you do a fitting and think, ‘Those trousers look a bit short’ or ‘That jacket looks a bit big.’ You stop yourself going in to correct that, because people look like that, don’t they? People buy off the peg and they’re not going to take the trousers up or let them down. They’ve got better things to do.”

Digging through the ruins

The disaster itself was rendered onscreen with a combination of practical shots and VFX. Filming the citizens of Aberfan as they dug through the black mud and ruins of buildings in search of their loved ones was intense and challenging. Childs built the rubble on the backlot of Elstree Studios, partially due to logistical concerns and partly because it would've been in bad taste to physically replicate the tragedy so close to Aberfan. While some of the debris and dirt is real, most of the ruined town set was built and faked using a skeleton framework with layers of dirt and detritus.

“I learned from my days on Shakespeare In Love , when I thought it would be fun to have real dirt on the floor of the Globe Theatre,” Childs recalls. “What I didn’t realize was that under the studio lights, all the bugs that lived in the dirt would come alive. As soon as Joseph Fiennes started having his legs bitten during rehearsal, I realized, ‘We have to fake it a bit.’ You do learn on the job that no matter how much you want things to be absolutely real, it’s better to have some decent fakery involved.”

Ahead of filming, Goldman met with Nigel Walters, a former BBC Film cameraman who was one of the first to arrive in Aberfan the night of the disaster. “He told me the most disturbing thing was the silence,” Goldman notes. “It was absolutely quiet so you can hear the survivors if they’re knocking on something or trying to get the attention of the rescuers.”

Goldman and director Benjamin Caron wanted to echo that emotion in the visuals. They used minimal lighting and brought in fog so the people of Aberfan appear mostly in silhouette. In reality, the town had lost its electricity, so all the light came from the rescue teams, fire department, and flashlights.

“It’s a realistic approach, to be honest, and it makes it so sad,” explains Goldman. “They’re all parents, the rescuers, on the same emotional stage, and it didn’t make much sense to us to actually identify each of them. They become ghosts searching for the kids and that felt to us like a very strong image. It was also playing with this black-and-white environment where all the color is gone because the kids are dead.”

Remembering the victims

Following the tragedy, the town of Aberfan held a memorial service for those who died. In the episode, it’s attended by Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies), although in real life, he wasn’t actually present for the service (he visited with the queen later). To recreate the stark drama of the moment, the production design team built several child-sized coffins, which were laid out in a grave they dug into the field. VFX extended the shots of the coffins and the crowd to make them larger in scale, with the camera pulling out in a drone shot to reveal the coffins arranged in a cross.

“It’s a painful thing to do, but nothing like the pain people suffered in real life,” Childs says of constructing the coffins. “It was our responsibility to get that right, so yes, we built the grave and yes, we built the coffins. The emotional response to a child-sized coffin is quite something.”

“It was a very, very emotional day,” Goldman adds. “The preacher’s speech is so moving and he’s [Hugh Thomas] such a lovely actor in the way he delivered the words. All the extras were actually crying. The extras were mainly from Wales, so it was a story they all knew. They really understood the story and felt it on the day.”

For Roberts, it was important to showcase real people, rather than focus on the palace and royal family. She wanted to keep things authentic without being too costume-y or making the crowd look downtrodden, especially in a moment of remembrance. “It’s a Welsh mining village and it’s poor, but it’s not raggedy,” she notes. “It’s not Dickens. These are proud working people.”

The Queen (finally) arrives

When the queen first hears the news of the Aberfan disaster in the episode, she’s sitting at her desk in the palace, dressed in a floral pink blouse. That look was intentional for Roberts, who wanted to contrast the reality of the harrowing scene in Wales with the queen’s inability to take action.

“There’s a journey for her through that story,” Roberts explains. “She doesn’t know she’s going to get bad news and I liked the sense that she’s clean and pretty and motherly. And Margaret, when she receives the news, has come in from a party in a glittery dress and a fur coat. That’s life, isn’t it? Events happen and you don’t know they’re happening. They’re wearing something quite inappropriate.”

She adds, “The colors are soft, feminine, motherly—and yet those are all the things she can’t be. When Wilson is trying to persuade her that it would be a good move to go there, she’s wearing that Madonna blue, a comforting color, and yet that’s the one thing she can’t be. And she knows it.”

The queen finally agrees to visit Aberfan, and Roberts wanted to recreate the brick-red coat and fur-lined hat the real queen wore to the exact detail. “ The Crown DNA is a balance,” she says. “It’s a balance of getting real moments and key moments, like the queen in Aberfan, like the Silver Jubilee, right. The classic ceremonies people will probably know or remember or can easily reference and events that are absolutely recorded, you have to do that. Then there’s so much in between where you don’t know what goes on and you can do flights of fancy. I don’t know if I have thought of using brick red, and I think it’s quite startling in, hopefully, a good way.”

Throughout the episode, the queen often appears in silhouette from behind—a visual trademark of The Crown . “Aberfan” ends as the camera moves up from behind the queen to a close-up shot of her face as a single tear finally trickles down her cheek. It’s the only time in the episode she shows real emotion, and the camerawork in the episode reflects that.

“Those [silhouette] shots are very much part of the visual grammar of the show,” Goldman explains. “But also, it made total sense to do more of those shots from behind on the ‘Aberfan’ episode because she’s in deep conflict. She cannot show emotion, she never cries—and she’s very open to the Prime Minister saying that. Shooting her from behind puts us with her and makes us share her anxiety and internal conflict.”

 Emily Zemler is a freelance writer and journalist based in London. She regularly contributes to the Los Angeles Times , Rolling Stone , and Observer , and is the author of five books. 

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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

MORE : The Crown season 3 review: Olivia Colman reigns supreme as Queen Elizabeth steps back from main plots

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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.

‘The Crown’ Recap Season 3 Episode 3: “Aberfan”

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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