The Curious History of Mazes by Julie E. Bounford

Author:Julie E. Bounford
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Wellfleet Press
Published: 2018-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

Illustration of Mollet’s maze design from 1651.

Illustration of Mollet’s maze design from 1651.

The “Hampton Court Maze” (shown here), planted between 1689 and 1695 by George London and Henry Wise in the palace “wilderness” gardens, may well have displaced an older maze. Originally constructed of hornbeam, it has been replanted several times over the years. The current maze, built with yew hedges, has over a 1/2 mile (.8 km) of paths. W.H. Matthews describes the maze as having a neat and symmetrical pattern “with quite sufficient of the puzzle about it to sustain interest and to cause amusement.” Its path is “without a needless and tedious excess of intricacy.” In 1718 English garden designer Stephen Switzer, and former pupil to London and Wise, writes about the maze in Iconographia Rustica saying “there are but three or four false stops, or methods to loose or perplex the rambler in his going in.” Another clearly unimpressed onlooker, Professor Rouse Ball, English historian of mathematics in his 1892 publication Mathematical Recreations and Essays, describes the “Hampton Court Maze” as being of “indifferent construction” and declares, “No labyrinth is worthy of the name of a puzzle which can be threaded in this way.”

There is a charming tale in English author Jerome K. Jerome’s 1889 humorous novel, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), of Harris attempting to escort his “country cousin” around this maze. He says with confidence, “We’ll just go in here, so that you can say you’ve been, but it’s very simple. It’s absurd to call it a maze. You keep on taking the first turning to the right. We’ll just walk round for ten minutes, and then go and get some lunch.” Then, some time later, a hapless Harris has to call for help. Ironically, if he had followed his own instructions to the letter, he would have been fine. A similar thing happens to the character Larry Weller in Carol Shield’s 1997 novel Larry’s Party, when he takes every wrong turning at Hampton Court. Larry goes on to develop a “maze craze” and becomes a maze designer.

The fact that Hampton Court Palace is often considered to be one of the most haunted buildings in England may well add more excitement to this maze experience. Over the centuries people have told stories of unexplained sounds, strange smells, and ghostly sightings throughout this intriguing Tudor palace. Another surviving hedge maze, planted at around the same time and very similar in design, is in the grounds of Egeskov Castle in Denmark. Hedge mazes were popular in Denmark also, and the fact that some examples have survived over the years is thanks to their wealthy and influential patrons.

These major verdurous installations required a lot of time and money for their upkeep. This, and the ever-changing fashions in gardening, left them rather exposed to potential destruction. During the eighteenth century, the great English landscape gardener Lancelot “Capability” Brown popularized a trend for informal and “natural” landscapes at private houses. It was out with geometric features and in with sinuous or irregular lines.

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