The King, Queen and Prince of Wales have joined the community of Aberfan to mark the 60th anniversary of the disaster that befell the Welsh mining village on 21 October 1966, when a colliery spoil tip collapsed and swept down into Pantglas Junior School and the houses around it.
At the Aberfan Memorial Garden, which stands on the site of the school, the royal party was led in a short service of prayers and reflection. The King laid a wreath and the Queen laid a bouquet, before the Prince of Wales stepped forward with a wreath carrying both his signature and that of the Princess of Wales, who did not attend. Its card read: "In our memory and in our hearts forever."
From the garden the King, 77, the Queen, 79, and Prince William, 44, walked to the Aberfan and Merthyr Vale Community Centre, where they spent more than an hour with survivors, bereaved families and members of the Aberfan Wives Group, founded by mothers who lost children in the disaster. Among those they met was a 96 year old former police officer who had been on duty in the village that morning.
"The saddest and most tragic of days imaginable"
In an address to the community, the King said it had been "so very special" for the Queen, the Prince of Wales and himself to be back in Aberfan as it marked 60 years since "what was, and always will be, the saddest and most tragic of days imaginable".
He told survivors and relatives that hearing their testimonies over the years, and again today, had been "profoundly humbling", and spoke of the heroism of the rescuers who dug through the slurry with their bare hands in the desperate hours after the tip came down. The Royal Family, he said, had heard stories of heartbreak in Aberfan, but had also been struck by "the most inspiring grace" of its people.
The Prince of Wales then unveiled the Aberfan Memorial Tree, planted as a living marker of the anniversary. In keeping with the protocol that direct heirs travel apart, William had made his own way to Wales ahead of the King and Queen, and remained in the village to meet more residents after his father and stepmother departed.
The Aberfan Disaster at a Glance
- On 21 October 1966, the last day of school before the half term break, a colliery tip from the Merthyr Vale Colliery slid downhill into Aberfan.
- Around 150,000 tonnes of mud and slurry engulfed Pantglas Junior School, a farm and some 20 houses.
- The disaster killed 144 people: 116 children, most of them aged between seven and ten, and 28 adults.
- The Aberfan Memorial Garden now stands where the school once was, its white arches marking the classrooms.
- The 60th anniversary was marked today with a service of prayers and reflection attended by the King, Queen and Prince of Wales.
A wound that shaped a reign
The disaster left a mark on the late Queen Elizabeth II that endured for the rest of her life. She waited eight days before visiting the village in 1966, a delay her former private secretary Lord Charteris later described as the one decision she believed she had got wrong. "Aberfan," he told the biographer Gyles Brandreth. "She got that wrong and she knows it."
It was a story her grandson appeared to acknowledge in 2023, when the Prince and Princess of Wales visited the village together for the first time. As one survivor, Jeff Edwards, recalled at the time, William told residents: "My grandmother always spoke about Aberfan." The Princess of Wales was visibly moved in the cemetery, where so many of the graves are of children the same age as her own.
A morning of farewells and remembrance
The visit to Wales came in the middle of one of the busiest weeks of the royal year. This morning at Windsor, the King and Queen formally bade farewell to the Sultan of Oman after the state banquet held in his honour on Tuesday night, before travelling to Aberfan. The Sultan went on to Downing Street for talks with the Prime Minister, and was due to be honoured with a banquet at the Guildhall in the City of London this evening.
For the community in the valley, though, today belonged to memory. Sixty years on, the names read out at the memorial garden, the wreaths at the arches and the King at the lectern all said the same thing: Aberfan is forgotten by no one, and least of all by those who wear the crown.