Earth Mysteries of the Isles of Scilly: Cheryl Straffon and Lana Jarvis visit Giant’s Castle Maze

At the beginning of the project I was searching for any and all information I could find about Scilly’s labyrinths. Archaeologist Katharine Sawyer and Museum Archivist Alison Clough both directed me towards a series of articles in Earth Mysteries journal Meyn Mamvro, and - as Layan mentioned in our first blog post about this project - I was already aware of the intriguing entry about Troy Town Maze in The Earth Mysteries Guide to the Ancient Site on the Isles of Scilly.

“The extraordinary Troy Town Maze… a strange, enigmatic site that fits into no other category, and has continued to amaze, bewilder and surprise visitors to this place since it was first recorded. It is an utterly unexpected thing to come across in such a remote location.”

~ Cheryl Straffon, The Earth Mysteries Guide to the Ancient Sites on the Isles of Scilly, 1995

Various photocopied Meyn Mamvro articles, forming a major part of our scrappy research library into Scilly’s Labyrinths and their history.

Meyn Mamvro proved to be an amazing resource, providing a more nuanced perspective on the Donovan Wilkins / Paul Broadhurst / Hamish Miller restoration of Troy Town Maze than the more sensationalist Scillonian magazine articles, with their inflammatory titles like “Troy Town Under Siege After Divine Intervention” (The Scillonian No. 233 Summer 1991). The level-headed and communication-focussed approach championed by Meyn Mamvro in regards to maze restoration provided a blueprint for our own community consultation and survey-based methodology for restoring the Giant’s Castle site.

“Perhaps there is a lesson in all this for the future - that all interested parties should get together and listen to each others points of view before acting unilaterally or laying down the law about the sites, which for many people are living sacred places which need protecting.”

~ Cheryl Straffon, Meyn Mamvro Vol 10, Autumn-Winter, 1989-90

Both Meyn Mamvro and the Earth Mysteries Guide series are published by Cheryl Straffon - doyenne of Cornwall’s ancient sites and self-publishing powerhouse. I had long been a fan, but - thanks to this project - I am now also a friend!

Cheryl and her partner Lana took an interest in our project after I was posting on various Facebook groups to try to ascertain what people know about the labyrinths and mazes - particularly in the culture of Cornwall and Scilly - and also trying to find a dowser to survey the labyrinth site, before we found the brilliant Michael on the islands.

Cheryl and Lana had planned a visit to Scilly around Easter time and offered to meet us at the Giant’s Castle site, as this was an area of Scilly they were as yet unfamiliar with and were keen to learn more about. We were absolutely delighted at the prospect of such experts taking a look at the labyrinth, and were even more delighted to receive such a warm and welcoming greeting from Cheryl and Lana the day we met. Lana is a dowser and before we arrived she had been quietly dowsing the energy lines around the maze to see if she could pick up anything in addition to the lines that Michael had previously found at the site. She picked up a line of energy running nearby, from Giant’s Castle Iron Age Cliff Castle off across Porth Hellick bay to Porth Hellick Burial Chamber on the opposite hill.

Lana was very quick to assure us that just because she had picked up a different line to Michael, this didn’t mean that one was right and one was wrong, more that different dowsers are sensitive to different energies and likely both were true.

While Lana’s line did not run though the maze, Lana and Cheryl explained that the energy lines do move, and so perhaps by all the energy that we are putting into the maze to restore it, and all the subsequent (we hope) walking, wishing, meditating and intention setting that the restored maze will provoke, perhaps this energy line will be attracted by our positivity and move closer to the maze. This is something we are keen to check, when this project comes to a close.

Lana, Cheryl, Layan and Teän at the Giant’s Castle Maze site with Giant’s Castle Iron Age Cliff Castle in the background.

After visiting the Giant’s Castle Maze, we showed Cheryl and Lana the nearby Salakee Down Stone Circle - a partly-natural partly-prehistoric site described by Borlase in 1756 as a “Druid Temple” where we did some more dowsing and took in the alignments to the Giant’s Castle Iron Age Cliff Castle (which looms behind the maze) and Porth Hellick Burial Chamber in the other direction. We discussed that Salakee Down feels like a meeting place, and a large open space under the sky, perhaps for observing the stars.

Cheryl, Layan and Lana at Salakee Down Stone Circle.

Alignments between two Salakee Down stones and Giant’s Castle.

We then walked back to Old Town - our conversation flowing easily between Archaeoastronomy to the Nornour Island Goddess Cult and everything in between. Here we said our goodbyes, with promises to meet again soon and to keep our new friends updated on the maze restoration and our work here on the islands.

Unaware of my fan-girl status, Cheryl gifted us a copy of The Earth Mysteries Guide to the Ancient Site on the Isles of Scilly.

And Layan asked her to sign it for us, which she kindly agreed to. We were so happy.