HOUSE of TREASURES

Burghley is England’s greatest Elizabethan house, whose priceless works of art were collected by extravagant earls on lavish grand tours. But its latest treasure came from a more unexpected source

NATASHA FOGES

It’s not every day that you unearth genuine treasure, but on a fine spring morning in 2023 Greg Crawley did just that. A digger driver on the Burghley Estate in Lincolnshire, he was working on a new car park in the grounds when his digger struck a hard object. Investigating further, he discovered the marble head of a lady, noseless but otherwise remarkably well preserved. The statue that was so nearly smashed to smithereens is thought to be Roman, almost 2,000 years old. Two weeks later, the bust to which the head was once attached was also rescued from the digger’s jaws, and the two pieces were carefully brought together. The mystery of why the Roman statue ended up buried has yet to be solved; a bungled burglary seems the…

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Britain (Digital) - 1 Issue, Sep/Oct 2024

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