The Queen's ledger stone

[swill453]

A BBC News story shows the ledger stone in the George VI Memorial Chapel in Windsor https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63020705

The story says it's a new stone, and I don't doubt it, but a couple of things intrigue me.

1. The picture at the bottom of the article shows the original stone for George VI and the Queen Mother. This seems to have space left on it for more names, so why was it not used as (presumably) intended? The spacing between George and Elizabeth is different on the new stone, so it really seems not to have been reused.

2. Bearing in mind the above, the colouring of the letters in the top picture to me indicates that the George and Elizabeth at the top are "older" than the Elizabeth and Philip at the bottom. How so, if this is a new stone?

Scott.

[Hallucigenia]

I imagine they had two stones so that when the time came to add HMQ's death date, they didn't need to take away the old one to the mason's workshop, so there wasn't a period when there was no stone at all.

[stewamax]

And I was wondering what is 'below'. We know what the Royal Vault - the one where HM's coffin initially descended to - looks like, but what is her new resting place: a brick 'manhole'? another horizontal vault like the Royal Vault? (presumably not just a deep earth grave).