Hidden under the gardens of Clifton Hill House, a hall of residence at Bristol University, is a remarkable collection of classical statuary.

The lost works of art decorated the Georgian mansion when it was home to John Addington Symonds, the Victorian literary critic, historian and poet, his wife, Catherine, and their four daughters.

Symonds, one of the first advocates of homosexual emancipation, abandoned Clifton Hill House for the clearer air of Davos, Switzerland, in 1877. But the family returned briefly three years later to burn personal papers. It was then that Catherine decided to inhume the statues that she had grown to hate.

Daughter Margaret recorded the fate of the emperors and philosophers that had been collected by Symonds and his father on their travels: "My mother had a large trench dug in the garden, and the busts were all wheeled down in wheelbarrows and put in the trench, and then the earth was shovelled in, and then my mother got in herself and danced upon the earth."

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In Davos, the family was at the heart of a remarkable literary community. Robert Louis Stevenson was a frequent visitor and Walt Whitman, whose work Symonds popularised, became a good friend. The daughters thrived. Poet Edward Lear wrote The Owl and The Pussy Cat to amuse the couple's eldest daughter, Janet; Margaret was Virginia Woolf's first love and the inspiration for Sally Seton in Mrs Dalloway , while Katharine skied with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and went on to found the Women's Royal Naval Service, the Wrens.

For the last 12 years of his life, Symonds lived with a Venetian gondolier, Angelo Fusato. The family was fond of Fusato and provided him with a pension after Symonds' death. In 1909 Clifton Hill House was sold to Bristol University. It is now home to 237 female students.

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Many attempts have been made to find the buried busts. A team of geophysicists plans to sweep the grounds with the latest detection equipment. In the meantime, a small permanent exhibition on the Symonds family is housed in the ladies' cloakroom.