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Cefn Golau Cholera Cemetery

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Cefn Golau Cholera Cemetery

Cefn Golau Cholera Cemetery is situated on a narrow mountain ridge in the county borough of Blaenau Gwent, between Rhymney and Tredegar in South East Wales. The Welsh name Cefn Golau means 'hill of light'. Cefn Golau is also the name of four nearby places. Two of them are cemeteries: a modern one, w

hich is maintained by the local authority – Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council – and its disused predecessor, the original cemetery of the town. The other two places are an adjacent leat and, below it, a suburb of the town. The graves in the cholera cemetery date from the three outbreaks of Asiatic cholera which occurred in 1832–1833, 1849–1850, and 1866. The cemetery is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is protected by law. According to one estimate, the total number of people buried "may number between 200 and 600". The cemetery is the only surviving cholera cemetery in South Wales and is one of the few such cemeteries that remain in Britain. In a 2022 lecture, Richard C. Keller, Professor of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, identified this cemetery, along with Duffy's Cut in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Cholera Monument in Sheffield, South Yorkshire...

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