John Conyers

John Conyers (c. 1633–1694) was an English apothecary and pioneering archaeologist. He was known "to collect such Antiquities as were daily found in and about London."

Artefacts and antiquities Conyers had a shop in Fleet Street, near St Paul's Cathedral during the period of construction of Sir Christopher Wren's new cathedral to replace Old St Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London, and collected the medieval and Roman artefacts unearthed, recording the finds in notebooks. They included a Roman kiln found 26 feet (8 metres) below surface level in the 1670s. According to his younger friend John Bagford, Conyers "made it his chief Business to make curious Observations and to collect such Antiquities as were daily found in and about London." His antiquarian collection won praise from the Athenian Mercury The site was near Gray's Inn Lane, opposite "Black Mary's". The remaining tooth was later thought to be of a mammoth or straight-tusked elephant. A flint handaxe was found nearby, Conyers was the first to argue that it was a human artefact. With other items from Conyers' collection, it passed to Sir Hans Sloane, whose personal objects became one of the founding collections of the British Museum. Conyers's notes on his discoveries are now in the British Library as Sloane manuscripts Ms 959 and Harley manuscripts Ms 5953.

Conyers married a niece of Francis Glisson. Dr Woodward's Shield, also now in the British Museum, is now recognised as a classicising French Renaissance buckler of the mid-16th century, perhaps sold from the Royal Armouries of Charles II, but was thought by Woodward and others to be an original Roman work.