English: An incomplete Roman copper alloy dragonesque brooch. The backwards S-shaped body has two terminals which take the form of a head with a snout and curved protrusions and rounded terminals with small circular depressions, which may represent ears or eyes. Around the neck of the upper terminal is a wound copper alloy ring, with an incomplete projection. This is the pin, used to secure the brooch to a garment, which Bayley and Butcher (2004. p 123) state is secured at the opposite end. There is a bar, D shaped in section, between the back of the upper head and the body of the brooch, below the neck.

There are two grooves running down the edges of the front of the body. Within these grooves, the body of the brooch is decorated by a line of five copper alloy lozenges set within two rows of triangular red enamelled? cells, pointing inwards. The red enamel? is incomplete, but in one cell this protrudes beyond the cell walls. There are also two grooves evident on the copper alloy ring around the upper neck, by the stub of the pin. The surface is heavily pitted and it is not clear if these grooves ran around the entire ring. The decoration is consistent with the type: Bayley and Butcher (ibid.) state that the centre of the plate bears conventional decoration, usually enamelled. The brooch has a green patina, but the surface is pitted, and the pits have a lighter green colour. The reverse of the brooch is undecorated, and slightly depressed (concave) at the centre. The brooch has a mass of 10.51g and it has maximum dimensions of 44.2mm long, 19.5mm wide (excluding the ring and pin) and 5.3mm thick at about the centre of the body.

Bayley and Butcher consider the dragonesque brooch to be a development in British made plate brooches (ibid. p 171). Bayley and Butcher also note that the distribution of dragonesque brooches is mainly in Britain, with a marked concentration in the North, where they were presumably made (p172). Based on a review of literature, Worrell (2007) dates Dragonesque brooches to AD 75-175.