Belvoir Angels

 

Speaker - Bob Trubshaw

A common motif on Charnwood slate gravestones from the early seventeenth century is now known as a 'Belvoir angel'. But this name was invented in the 1970s. And is doubly misleading as the motif is found outside the Vale of Belvoir and, when carved, was not thought to depict an angel. Bob Trubshaw sheds light on what the motif originally meant – and why it might indicate the deceased followed a particular 'sub-sect' of eighteenth-century Christianity.