Corbridge Lion

The Corbridge Lion stands in the Roman site museum at Corbridge, Northumberland. It is a free-standing sandstone sculpture of a male lion on a prone animal, set on a semi-cylindrical coping stone base. The lion measures less than a metre in length and height, and once served as funerary ornamentation for a tomb. Later, it was reused as a fountainhead by running a water pipe through its mouth. The sculpture was discovered in 1907 during excavations led by Leonard Woolley on Site II, a corridor building with tesselated floors and hypocausts. The find was made by workers who joked about the lion holding an orange in its mouth when first uncovered. At least four other stone lions have been found at Corbridge, including two from a 2nd-century mausoleum at Shorden Brae. One was built into a village wall, and another was once in a private museum. The Corbridge Lion is believed to date from the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD. Visitors to the Corbridge Roman site museum can see the lion on display today. The museum is run by English Heritage and showcases finds from the Roman town. Site II, where the lion was found, still shows traces of its tesselated floors and painted wallplaster. The museum offers a quiet space to view Roman artefacts in a setting close to where they were first uncovered.