Features of The Walls
Ancient Techniques and Tools
The maze will contain features traditionally found in walls across North Yorkshire
Special Stone Features
Traditional Stone Step Stiles
These are especially long through stones built into the walls so that they stick out at right angles and form a diagonal series of steps up one side of the wall and down the other.
From the top of the wall visitors have an overview of the whole maze enabling them to consider possible alternative routes within the maze, immediately transporting themselves from one section to another, but not always moving forwards to the goal.
The maze will contain dead ends and apparent dead ends, only on closer inspection can a stile be seen, when viewed from a distance they appear invisible. The stile offers a shortcut deeper into the maze.
Squeezer Stiles
Two large stones six feet high standing almost shoulder to shoulder built into the wall with the narrowest of gaps separating them, allowing people to pass but not sheep.
Smout Holes
A hole built into the wall large enough to let sheep through but too small for cattle, perfect for children to hide in and surprise their parents.
Large Boulder Stones
Set into the walls to act as marker stones.
Bee Boles
These were built in garden walls specifically to house the old fashioned type of straw bee skep. In these niches the hives survive the winter. The bee boles will make good seats for weary visitors, out of the wind and well protected especially if their tops are built not with ordinary flat lintels but with an arch.
Large Flat Stones
Set at the base of the last inner wall, which encircles the goal at the centre of the maze providing seating for the visitors.
Hole Stone
The Phantom Gate
The walling up of gateways is a method adopted to prevent the wind blowing across exposed fields. Whenever cattle or sheep need to be moved through the gateway, the wall must be taken down and rebuilt. Elsewhere, the walling up of a gateway occurs when it is no longer used.
Unlike the hedge mazes with their fixed routes and pathways, which remain the same from one year to the next, the walls within the drystone wall maze can be dismantled, removed and relocated. A visitor on returning to the maze may find that the route they remembered taking on a previous visit, which took them forward to the goal, has now changed. An entrance which had been there before has now vanished. A path which led to a dead end is now a path leading to the goal and is passed by.
The inclusion of phantom gates within the maze will ensure the maze remains challenging, compelling people to revisit the maze.
The Goal
The maze, unable to prevent visitors from reaching its goal, will ultimately surrender it to them. Soon, at the center of the maze, the journey will come to an end. The final circular wall within the maze will create a natural, peaceful space, a place where visitors will come together. The experience of finding oneself “here” will be the reward for reaching the goal. At the most central point within the maze, where all activity will subside, a tree will stand as a focal point for visitors to contemplate, reflect, or simply play around.
Quick Exit
After the climax of reaching the goal, visitors will have the opportunity to spend as much time as they wish finding their way out. The option of leaving through a quick exit will sustain the elation of having solved the maze.
