In the quiet cemetery at Llanfabon, near Nelson, a row of simple grey gravestones has stood for nearly 130 years in memory of 11 men who died in a pit disaster at the Albion Colliery in 1894. Today, in a beautiful and poignant act of remembrance, colourful flowers were lain on their graves.
Sul y Blodau, Sunday of the Flowers, is the Welsh term for Palm Sunday - the Sunday before Easter Sunday - and Easter Sunday itself have historically been a time people put flowers on the graves of their loves ones. On the Saturday before, the graves were cleaned, the graves were tidied and flowers were planted or strewn on them.
The Sublime Wales blog explains that the custom used to see tens of thousands of people visiting cemeteries, there were problems with crowd control meaning police had to help and tickets had to be distributed and demand for flowers was so great, they had to be sent from London. The custom, which is thought to have started in the second half of the 19th century, spread during the early 20th century from south-east Wales to much of Wales and over the border into England.
