Clive Aslet unravels the remarkable story of Randoll Coate, maker of extraordinary mazes for a range of distinguished clients
LAST year, Blenheim Palace celebrated the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Marlborough Hedge Maze, a thing of ingenious symbolism and dense yew hedges, made of 3,000 trees, whose thickness means that it is better now than when it was planted in 1987.
A place of wonder, if also (enjoyable) frustration to visitors attempting to ‘solve’ it, the maze takes on a different aspect when one of the two viewing platforms is climbed. then, it reveals the beauty of its design, inspired by the trophies of war on the skyline of the house. ‘My design incorporated flags flying, trumpets blaring, lances thrusting and pyramids of cannon balls for firing,’ wrote the designer Randoll Coate, who died in 2005 at the age of 96.
Coate, who often worked, as at Blenheim, with Adrian Fisher, deserves to be called the father of the modern maze, even though he only turned to ‘labyrinthology’ (his word) after his retirement from a diplomatic career.
Maze-making requires a certain type of mind—inventive, witty, learned, deep. those at least were some of Coate’squalities. From an English family living in Switzerland who ran a shop in Geneva called Old England, he grew up in Lausanne. a godmother supported his time at Oriel College, Oxford, to which he won a scholarship. at the outbreak of the second World War, he attempted to put his fluent French and German to use, only to find that he was offered a job living undercover in Romania. as Romanian was not one of his languages, he joined the Intelligence Corps.
In 1941, he volunteered for the Operation archery Commando raid in Norway, noticing, as he dashed back to the landing craft after a hair-raising but successful mission, a little wooden Madonna and child from a Christmas crèche, dropped by a German soldier. It still decorates the top of the family Christmas tree.
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