Auction photo suggests Roman granite column in Nottinghamshire country park based on portico of Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius in 150 AD

© Notts County Council

© Notts County Council

© Notts County Council

© Russ Hamer / Wikimedia Commons

Visit Rufford Abbey and Country Park.

A pink granite column previously thought to have been a work of public art could have been based on a huge portico leading to the 2nd century villa of an Emperor in Rome, according to archaeologists excavating for medieval remains in a popular Nottinghamshire country park.Measuring four foot tall and covered in algae, the column contains a discreet shipping mark made by Lord John Savile, the keen 19th century archaeologist and philanthropist who owned Rufford Abbey as his stately home but carried out excavations at Lanuvium, on land that he owned, and at Nemi, with permission from the landowner.Savile shipped items back to the UK between the 1880s and 1890s, donating them to museums including the Castle Museum in Nottingham. The lucky discovery of the column, aided by a chance comment from a visiting conservation specialist, has led archaeologists to believe that some of his Rome treasures remain at the Abbey estate.“From documents he wrote at the time, which are kept on file by Nottinghamshire County Council, Lord Savile was a passionate and evocative writer who is clearly very knowledgeable and fascinated by the archaeology,” says Emily Gillott, a Community Archaeologist who spent a “very successful” summer investigating the public grounds with the help of colleague Lorraine Horsley.“There is not a single mention of value anywhere in what he writes. Savile was clearly an accomplished archaeologist and also a great philanthropist.“He donated over 1,500 items from Nemi to the Castle Museum here, and similarly donated huge amounts of material from Lanuvium to another museum.“He wanted people to be aware of the intellectual and historical value of these things.“He was excavating at the same time as some of the established great names in archaeology: Heinrich Schliemann, Arthur Evans, Flinders Petrie and Augustus Pitt-Rivers.“He and his contemporaries went on to influence and inspire the next generation of archaeologists, who were much more scientific in their approaches, including Gordon Childe, Mortimer Wheeler, Leonard Woolley and Howard Carter.“He was living and excavating at a pivotal period in the development of archaeology as a discipline, where it was transitioning from an antiquarian interest to a scientific study.“We had viewed the place as a public sculpture park for a long time, but recently we have started to look at the place as the home of an enthusiastic archaeologist.“From this perspective, a number of pieces that we thought were pure ornament are looking very much like artefacts brought back from Rome.”Gillott believes Savile had found a damaged marble bust of the Goddess, Juno, at Lanuvium. She theorises that the bust at Rufford was a replica he had made for the gardens, auctioned in 1938 when the abbey was sold. Despite the departure of the bust, the pink granite column remained at the estate.“We have plenty of information here about the excavations at Nemi but very little at all about those at Lanuvium,” she concedes.“We have found reference to a portico constructed of massive pink granite columns which was in the environs of the villa of Antoninus Pius. These items all clearly formed part of Lord Savile's private collection.“They are all located within the Roman garden area of the grounds, where he had a massive fountain constructed in the style of one of the lamps he found at Nemi.“What a chap. We hope this latest discovery can certainly help us to further promote Savile as one of the archaeological greats.“Our new discoveries are changing the way we look at Rufford Abbey and the grounds.”Now a tourist attraction for around 450,000 visitors each year, the country park itself, on the road between Nottingham and Doncaster, has a colourful history with beginnings as part of a 12th century Cistercian abbey.After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, the land and buildings began a slow transformation into a country house estate, owned first by the Talbot and later the Savile families.One of its most famous owners was the Elizabethan aristocrat and property magnate George Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury, whose wife Bess of Hardwick later built Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. Rufford was transferred to the Savile family of Yorkshire, eventually becoming their principal country seat.Rising costs and reduced incomes at the start of the 20th century saw the estate sold and neglected before the county council bought the abbey and 150 acres of its grounds in 1952, turning them into a country park in 1969 and restoring features such as the lake, meadows, gardens and orangery during the decades which followed.Public excavations are planned at the Scheduled Ancient Monumnet between June 29 and July 10 2015.