“It was a part of childhood:” Interview with local history expert Lindsay Sandford
In our search to find out more about Giant’s Castle Maze, we went to talk to Lindsay Sandford, a the local history expert who - together with her husband Brian - is responsible for the amazing Old Town Churchyard project. Lindsay also grew up nearby Giant’s Castle Maze in Old Town and can remember walking the maze as a child - and with her own children and grandchildren.
As we sat around the kitchen table, Lindsay shared her recollections of what the maze was like in her childhood, and how it has changed…
“When I was little we used to go out there for a walk because we lived at Old Town. Then the maze had a hard edge to the heather or moss or whatever it’s made of, and the rocks were all visible when we were kids. The tracks around it were all mud and you’d see the mica and quartz in it. But it was there.”
“Then as the time’s gone on, the heather and everything has just encroached and covered the rocks over. We all used to sit on the quartz in the middle. Nobody was allowed to hop over. You couldn’t cheat. Sounds a bit daft really, relating that, but no, you had to follow it. It was defiintely something that you always did when you were up there. You always used to go around it. It was just part of childhood.”
We also asked Lindsay who she thinks most likely built the labyrinth…
“I still think it was service people - whether it was the Home Guard or anybody that was here in the Second World War. Because the lookout is just around the side and you can see where the walls are and the stanchions are for it. I haven’t come across anything about those labyrinths prior to the Second world War.”
Possible labyrinth-builders: servicemen stationed on St Mary’s in WWII - from the SA&H museum archive
Possible labyrinth-builders: servicemen stationed on St Mary’s in WWI - from the SA&H museum archive
“You know it’s not old. You know it’s not linked to the Iron Age fort. And unless they are out there already, who’s going to be out there to spend time doing it? Most people are too busy doing their gardening and subsistence living, aren’t they? They haven’t got time to go lugging stones to make a labyrinth, have they? As much as we think it’s lovely - they just wouldn’t have done, would they?”
“They’d all have one donkey and a field square, and they’d be busy. Augustus Smith tightened up all the leases so they couldn’t sublet, which got rid of a lot of people from the islands. He started in 1834 and he died in 1872. The practice before he came was that the farmers had obviously subdivided and subdivided so too many people were living off a piece of land, so times were really really hard. So a lot of people left then, and I suppose, I don’t think they would have had free time to do it.”
“But servicemen would have. And I think if you’re out there, for a few hours, then why not?”
It was fantastic to have these conversations - sipping glasses of wine with Lindsay and her family - to bring both historical and personal context to Giant’s Castle Maze, and understand what was going on for islanders at different points in this maze’s long history.
