AN ABERYSTWYTH woman has called on the council to have more respect for the dead after the grave of her Second World War veteran father-in-law was left overgrown with grass.

Betty Humphreys said she goes to visit the grave of her husband’s late father every week at the council-owned Aberystwyth Cemetery, at Plascrug, and claimed the council was showing a lack of respect for the dead by not cutting the grass regularly enough.

But the Greener Aberystwyth Group argue that the long grass is a natural habitat and should be preserved,

Mrs Humphreys’ father-in-law, Maldwyn Humphreys, known as ‘Big Mal’ to the people of Aberystwyth, owned the Weston Vaults in the 1950s, and later bought the Talbot Hotel on Market Street in the 1970s.

She said her husband’s father, who died at the age of 89 in 2003, served in the Second World War, and she vowed to fight the council to take better care of the cemetery.

“He was a sergeant in the Grenadier Guards,” Mrs Humphreys said.

“He rode on motorbikes at Dunkirk, where he would have gone ahead to see if the road was safe.

“I will fight it right through for my father-in-law, who had his knee caps blown off in the Second World War.”

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