Hampton Court Maze
If you haven’t visited Hampton Court, your only knowledge of the maze may come from the novel ‘Three Men in a Boat’ written by Jerome K Jerome, one of whose three men declared the maze 'very simple...it's absurd to call it a maze', only to become completely lost and having to be rescued by a gardener.
Perhaps the most famous maze in the world, the Hampton Court Palace Maze was planted in hornbeam trees in 1690 for William III. It was part of an informal layout in the grounds, known as the Wilderness. It is the first hedge planted maze in Great Britain, and such mazes flourished in Britain right up to the eighteenth century, when Capability Brown introduced natural landscaping and, in order to achieve his sweeping views, destroyed many formal garden features. Ironically, as Royal Gardener for twenty years, he lived alongside the Maze at Hampton Court, but was ordered by royal command not to interfere with it!
Sadly the hornbeams began to decay and the current maze was established in the 1960s when the hornbeam hedges were gradually replanted with fast growing yew.
The maze is trapezoidal in shape, covers an area of one third of an acre and consists of half a mile of paths. It takes around twenty minutes to reach the centre. The yew hedges are approximately seven feet high and three feet wide and a team of gardeners trim them three times a year. Around 330,000 people attempt to find their way through the maze every year.
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