Thanks for the tips, they have given me some ideas to work with.  I can picture rigging the mesh like a tail could work.  Whilst reading your replies it occurred to me that I might be able to do a series of front ortho renders of the column.  Render, rotate, render, rotate etc, Then take the image sequence and stitch them into one image and use that image to generate, normal and displacement maps for a new mesh.    Thanks again for the help. 

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