Graveyard at the Marble Church, Gravestones Memorials Monuments Effigies Bodelwyddan, Denbighshire - Wales where to go, what to see and where to stay in Wales

The churchyard at Bodelwyddan is the source of a great deal of controversy. It contains the graves of victims of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19 who were based in the nearby Kinmel Park Military Camp. More controversially it is also the burial place for a number of Canadian soldiers who were awaiting repatriation after the end of the First World War. Various stories have circulated over the years about a riot in the camp which resulted in the deaths of five of the Canadian soldiers on 4-5th March 1919. I quote the official Church website.. " a riot occurred in the camp when the ship allocated to return the troops to Canada was diverted to carry food supplies to Russia, and five Canadian soldiers were killed in the disturbances and subsequently buried in St Margaret's Churchyard; a common story is that they were executed for mutiny, but this has been denied by the Canadian Department of National Defence." For what it is worth I can offer my twopenn’orth.. or rather my mother's twopenn'orth of information. My mother was born in 1918. She lived some 9 miles from Bodelwyddan in Colwyn Bay and she remembers the story thus: "The Canadian and British soldiers fought among themselves. Some soldiers were killed in the fighting and they were buried in the Marble Church." (The source of my mother's information would probably have been her father, my grandfather, who also served in the First World War. Make your own mind up about which version is the most truthful, but I tend to believe the spoken word rather than the official versions.) Whatever the truth of the matter it was a very sad episode for the poor young men who had survived the horrors of the World War only to suffer again in what should have been a place of refuge. It may be some consolation to relatives of the soldiers that the graves are well tended and there is a memorial to the Canadian soldiers within the churchyard.