Labyrinth Or Maze? (2)
Early and mediaeval Christians adopted two-dimensional labyrinths in their iconography, usually in the form of wall or floor decorations, the oldest known, at the Basilica of Reparatus in Orleansville in Algeria, dating from the 4th century AD. Their purpose is unclear, some suggesting that they depict the twists and turns that beset the Christian life, others that they map out a penitential journey that could be undertaken by genuflecting in one’s own church.
Labyrinths were especially popular features during the church building boom of the 13th century in France and Italy, a fashion not followed in England, the only examples from the period being the tiny labyrinth symbol on the Mappa Mundi and the gilded roof boss at St Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol. Most labyrinths found in churches in southern and eastern England date to the late 19th century, although there has been a recent wave of new constructions, for example at Norwich and Wakefield cathedrals, in 1985 and 2013 respectively.
A familiar sight in or just outside late mediaeval British villages was a turf maze. Cut about six inches into the turf and ranging from twenty-five to just over 80 feet in diameter, the path was traditionally a mile long. They had a long legacy, Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis historia warning his readers not to compare the Egyptian labyrinth with “the mazes formed in the fields for the entertainment of children”. Colloquially, they were known as “mizmazes” or “Troy town”, an allusion to the legend that Troy was fortified with seven walls arranged as a maze, or “Shepherd’s Race”, echoing a reference in Theophilus Evans’ Drych y Prif Oesedd (1740) to shepherds cutting turf into the shape of a labyrinth.
Hedge mazes, a natural development from the rustic turf maze, were first constructed in the 16th century. Initially, they were not intended to confuse, consisting simply of a unicursal path that meandered along low hedges made of evergreen herbs or dwarf box. Puzzle hedge mazes with their fiendish multicursal path design, dead ends, and hedges taller than eye-level, were introduced in the late 17th century. The oldest surviving example is to be found in Hampton Court, planted for William of Orange in 1690 using hornbeam and containing half a mile of paths. Replacing an earlier maze, it was boxed in by pre-existing paths which gives its peculiar trapezoid shape.
Hedge mazes continued to be a feature of the fashionable English garden well into the 18th century, the wonderfully named Batty Langley including several designs for them in his New Principles of Gardening (1728). Over time, though, new gardening styles, not least the trend towards more “naturalistic” designs, coupled with the sheer cost of maintaining them, led to many being rooted out and ploughed over. What remain today are a fraction of the number of mazes in Britain in the early 18th century.
Nevertheless, they are still being constructed. The hedge maze at Longleat in Wiltshire, consisting of more than 16,000 English yew trees and with over a mile and a half of pathways[1], eventually leading to the central observation tower, it is the biggest in Britain. It was only added to the estate in 1978.
Terminological inexactitude bedevils much of the literature surrounding labyrinths and mazes and that is not surprising. Labyrinth is much the older word, first found on a clay tablet from 1400 BC in Knossos which bore the legend “one jar of honey to all the gods, one jar of honey to the Mistress of the Labyrinth”, and passed via Greek and Latin into most European languages. Maze, derived from the Middle English “maes” meaning delirium or delusion, dates from the 13th century and probably emerged to help distinguish multicursal labyrinths from unicursal. Today the two terms, other than amongst the cognoscenti, are used interchangeably, a trend likely to continue as adjectivally labyrinthine is more expressive of intricacy and confusion than the more anodyne mazy.
Whatever we call them, we should celebrate their long historical legacy, their architectural and geometric complexity, and the fun they give. Vivant labyrinths and mazes!
