Vanished!

Last Sunday I visited a cemetery a few miles from my home. When I walked through the gate, I was amazed by the quality and the beauty of the headstones and memorials stretched out before me. This weekend, I will share with you views of a number of striking mourning figures I found there. My last post 'What Lies Beneath' showed the rough handiwork inside the interior of a stone memorial. By way of connection, one of the first headstones I saw was topped by rose and other foliage. When I looked down, I was rather shocked to find that there was something missing. Normally, a mason carves the words into the headstone but, here, the names were inscribed on a panel that was then fixed to the front of the stone. Someone has removed the panel in its entirety, so it is now an unknown grave. I haven't seen anything similar before. If you look closely, you can see two of the fixing pins at the top edge of the surround.