The Corbridge Lion,

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land on ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, is an

ancient Roman In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...

free-standing

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

of a male

lion The lion (''Panthera leo'') is a large Felidae, cat of the genus ''Panthera'' native to Africa and India. It has a muscular, broad-chested body; short, rounded head; round ears; and a hairy tuft at the end of its tail. It is sexually dimorphi ...

standing on a prone animal (possibly a deer) on a semi-cylindrical coping stone base. Measuring 0.95m in length by 0.36m in width and 0.87m high, it was originally a piece of decorative funerary ornamentation from a

tomb A tomb ( grc-gre, τύμβος ''tumbos'') is a :wikt:repository, repository for the remains of the dead. It is generally any structurally enclosed interment space or burial chamber, of varying sizes. Placing a corpse into a tomb can be ...

(symbolising the conquest of Death over Life). It was subsequently re-used as a fountainhead by passing a water pipe through its mouth. It was found in a water tank in 1907 in

excavations In archaeology, excavation is the exposure, processing and recording of archaeological remains. An excavation site or "dig" is the area being studied. These locations range from one to several areas at a time during a project and can be condu ...

led by

Leonard Woolley Sir Charles Leonard Woolley (17 April 1880 – 20 February 1960) was a British archaeologist best known for his Excavation (archaeology), excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavat ...

on Site II (a corridor building with tesselated floors,

hypocaust A hypocaust ( la, hypocaustum) is a system of central heating in a building that produces and circulates hot air below the floor of a room, and may also warm the walls with a series of pipes through which the hot air passes. This air can warm th ...

s, and painted wallplaster that has been suggested as a ''

mansio In the Roman Empire, a ''mansio'' (from the Latin word ''mansus,'' the perfect passive participle of ''manere'' "to remain" or "to stay") was an official stopping place on a Roman road, or ''via'', maintained by the central government for the use ...

'' or posting station) on the Roman site at

Corbridge Corbridge is a village in Northumberland, England, west of Newcastle and east of Hexham. Villages nearby include Halton, Acomb, Aydon and Sandhoe. Etymology Corbridge was known to the Romans as something like ''Corstopitum'' or ''Coriosopit ...

. It is believed to date to the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD.Phillips 1977:31 In his autobiographical volume ''Spadework'', Woolley noted that it was found whilst he was at the

bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because ...

in Corbridge collecting the workers'

wages A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', ''prevailing wage'', and ''yearly bonuses,'' and remuner ...

, and that when they revealed their discovery to him upon his return, the man who excavated it commented "when I first saw that there lion he had a blooming orange in 'is mouth!" (Woolley 1953:16). At least four other stone lions have been found at Corbridge, two of them excavated in association with the enclosure wall around a 2nd-century

mausoleum A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or people. A mausoleum without the person's remains is called a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be consid ...

at Shorden Brae, in the cemetery just west of the Roman town (Gillam and Daniels 1961), one built into a wall in the village (Phillips 1977:32), and another (now lost) was in the private museum owned by Bartholomew Lumley during the early 19th century (Dickinson 2000:114). The Corbridge Lion is now on display in the Corbridge Roman site museum run by

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

. ''The Lion of Corbridge Hotel'' (closed 2003), immediately south of the modern bridge, was named after it.

References

* Dickinson, G. (2000) ''Corbridge – the Last Two Thousand Years'' (London) * Gillam, J.P. and Daniels, C.M. (1961) "The Roman mausoleum on Shorden Brae, Beaufront, Corbridge, Northumberland", ''Archaeologia Aeliana'' (4th Series) 39, 37–62 * Phillips, E.J. (1977) ''Corpus Signorum Imperium Romani I,i Corbridge, Hadrian's Wall East of the North Tyne'' (Oxford), 31–2, No. 82, Plate 24 * Woolley, L. (1953) ''Spadework: Adventures in Archaeology'' (London)

External links

Corbridge Roman site

Corbridge: A Tale of Two Lions
{{coords, 54.978, -2.030, display=title Roman Empire sculptures History of Northumberland Archaeological sites in Northumberland Roman Britain Hadrian's Wall Sculptures of lions

Lion The lion (''Panthera leo'') is a large Felidae, cat of the genus ''Panthera'' native to Africa and India. It has a muscular, broad-chested body; short, rounded head; round ears; and a hairy tuft at the end of its tail. It is sexually dimorphi ...