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."
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