Featured Gryffon brooch

Any ideas on this brooch please?. I think it is a Gryffon in the centre - does that have any symbolism or is there anything to be learned from the rest of it?. about 2 inches long.
Arrived in a metal detecting lot (UK) but sadly no provenance as to where it was found.
Thanks for looking

 

Gryffindor?

 

I'm seeing a dragon.

 

A gryffon is part eagle, part lion. The head of this bird does not look like an eagle's & critter goes all snaky on the back end. Think either a dragon, as aaron said, or some other mythical beast of the East.

 

What is that described as Fid as it looks very similar?

 

Basilisk? x

 

Basilisk Statue in Basel, Switzerland

 

the Basilisk has a positive and a negative aspect. it can kill people with a single look, but it has also a protective side to guard the owner against disaster and bad luck. here it protects the bridge, but it's also used on the small potable water fountains that are spread over the whole city and were intended to deliver potable water to the lower classes since the 1850s because the whole water system was still from the middle ages in the poorer quarters.
some have a small water outlet at the foot for the dogs.

 

I don't know much but I loved *monsters* as a child, got any info I may have retained (which isn't much) from this book...K...did you come across this book, as you're in the UK as well? I loved it xx
(not my image, got from net xx)

 

There is of course a basilisk in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

 

I tried to read Harry Potter, it must have something because my hub read it and he's not a reader but I found it too hard going to continue past page 20 or so.

 

didn't know that.
but then, I'm more on the classical side when it comes to literature.
a good place for monsters is the Convento de las duenas in Salamanca where stonemasons carved near a hundred for the capitels of the columns of the inner court; it's suspected that the designers were under the influence of ergot kernel.
very good sweets as well by the Sisters.

 

Thought they did a good job with it in the movie.

 

I've never seen it, never watched a film all the way through...my son tried to make me watch Lord of the Rings once ( which is a brilliant book) but I moaned and groaned so much he let me off after a hour thankfully

 

same here. my wife tried it, too. she can loose herself in these films and is completely absent. same with books - she can read Stephen King, Harry Potter etc.. I can't.
then she tells me I have no fantasy, upon which I tell her that she has a lifelong depot of LSD in her body since the early 70s... we're a happy couple, really.

 

I would love to be able to lose myself in a film but I just can't ... I can't watch TV either,never had one but I can read for hours. I used to read Stephen King when I was a kid but don't think I could now ( or was it James Herbert) ... haha that made me laugh about the LSD. Maybe if I dosed myself up on it I'd be able to enjoy a film.
Mr. Bou is great...has many excellent qualities...but man he will watch some kerap.
I think youtube is better though than mainstream TV as I can manage to block most of that out. He's had penchants for some appalling stuff that however hard I tried,it STILL got in my poor ears...he loved an Australian programme for a while which seemed to literally be some screamy women shouting at their equally squealy but slightly gruffer male counterparts x 134

 

Basilisk!. That's it. Thankyou @Fid @Hollyblue @Bronwen @BoudiccaJones
Can this be dated by what's left of the clasp?

 

Second quarter of 20th?

 

Excellent. Possibly why it's found it's way to me.

More excellent still!