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Some of you might have seen my posts about a rare "Belvoir Angel" headstone in my tree at Ropsley church. There were around 320 examples found in the 1970's and a group of enthusiasts have found a further 20 or so in recent years. Mine wasn't amongst the original 320 and was only "discovered" as an angel last year. I kept checking my photos and wondered if it was rare "double angel" which features two angels across the top of the stone. A visit yesterday by someone I chanced across on facebook has resulted in some more photographs and confirmed the visible part of the stone is all that remains.
The end result is that there is some severe damage, roughly a third of the stone is missing on the left hand side but enough remains to confirm it is a double angel and therefore very rare. It's actually difficult to say how many doubles there are but singles certainly outnumber doubles by a considerable amount. I've updated my application to get Listed Status for the stone (a single in the churchyard was listed many years ago). One thing is for certain, whether it's one of ten or one of 50 it's one of a very small number of examples that only exist in a small area of the UK and are not found anywhere else. I actually have a second BA stone in the family at Car Colston in Notts and possibly a third at one of the churches where the majority of them are found but I need a miracle to prove it. To have one is unusual, two is almost unheard of, three is just being greedy
The end result is that there is some severe damage, roughly a third of the stone is missing on the left hand side but enough remains to confirm it is a double angel and therefore very rare. It's actually difficult to say how many doubles there are but singles certainly outnumber doubles by a considerable amount. I've updated my application to get Listed Status for the stone (a single in the churchyard was listed many years ago). One thing is for certain, whether it's one of ten or one of 50 it's one of a very small number of examples that only exist in a small area of the UK and are not found anywhere else. I actually have a second BA stone in the family at Car Colston in Notts and possibly a third at one of the churches where the majority of them are found but I need a miracle to prove it. To have one is unusual, two is almost unheard of, three is just being greedy
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