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Saturday 22 November 2008

Mazed and confused

Sinclair McKay gets lost in a labyrinth

Is it possible for a Sat-Nav-coddled generation really to appreciate the aesthetic pleasure of a hedge maze? After all, if there is one thing that never happens in theory any more, it is people getting lost. Would many children even properly understand the idea now?

Well actually, the other weekend, shadow chancellor George Osborne’s son appeared to cope rather well with the concept: as his father negotiated the twists of the Hever Castle beech-tree maze, together with his daughter, and got stuck in a dead end, Osborne Jr — according to his father — reached the maze centre with triumphant speed.

But actually, this is the ideal time for everyone to explore an amusing tradition that dates back many thousands of years. For in the grounds of countless posh British houses, mazes — composed of either beautifully grown yew or laurel — are enjoying a renaissance. The pleasure is not purely a horticultural one, though there is obviously something deeply pleasing about all these elaborate patternings of greenery. It is the curious possibilities thrown up by voluntary disorientation.

It was William III who in 1690 first saw the escapist appeal of labyrinths. In having the Hampton Court maze planted, just outside that Thames-side palace, he gave a whole new dimension to what was already a centuries-old esoteric spiritual pursuit.

The Hampton Court maze, as we know, has multiple path choices and dead ends, but there is only one path that can lead to the centre.

But the original mazes — the ones that can be traced back not only to Knossos and the legend of the Minotaur, but which also form ancient stone sites thousands of years old as far afield as northern Russia and Spain — had only one path (‘unicursal’ is the technical term).

The idea was that one would process along this single winding path, back and forth, round and round, until one reached the centre. The Christian church nabbed this as a symbol for the journey of life. One of the finest mediaeval labyrinths is to be found at Chartres Cathedral; it’s a design classic now, as they say. There are many others to be found in the Gothic churches of France. And indeed there are still a few in England, inlaid into those stone floors. In one sublimely unsettling passage in Peter Ackroyd’s novel Hawksmoor, an old empty church seems to come to life with chanting figures moving around a labyrinth.

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