This is one of three bronze lion head handles or knockers on display in the Museum. They were discovered in Jerusalem in the early 1920s on the site of the first hospital run by the Order of St John from around AD 1080 to 1187. At the time of their discovery, Sir Harry Luke was Assistant Governor of Jerusalem and, in 1958, Luke presented them to the Priory Church in Clerkenwell. They were hung on the doors to the Church in alongside a plaque that proclaimed them to be Medieval Knockers.  

In 2016 a research team from the Bearers of the Cross project investigated them further, but they couldn’t find any similar medieval objects in any other collection, catalogue or published works. They studied over fifty examples of lion door knockers, and yet not one was made in either a similar style or in a similar way. Eventually, they did discover a dozen similar objects, but they were not medieval, but Roman. Our lion head door knockers are therefore now also believed to be Roman and therefore to be around a thousand years older than had originally been thought, dating from long before the birth of the Order of St John and their hospital in Jerusalem. 

Find out more about the Bearers of the Cross research team’s work on this and many other objects here: http://www.bearersofthecross.org.uk/mystery-bronze-lion-heads-museum-order-st-john/