Roof Angel with the Stanley Crest

Elaborately raftered roofs decorated with large wooden angels, their wings outstretched as if in flight, were a distinctively English tradition in the late Middle Ages. This dramatic example, from a group removed from a parish church in Aughton (Lancashire) in the 1870s, bears the crest of Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby and stepfather to King Henry VII. The heraldic device on the shield takes the form of an eagle grasping a swaddled infant in its talons, representing a Stanley family legend about an early ancestor who was born out of wedlock, abandoned, and raised by eagles before making a triumphant return.