Searching for the Origin of the Giant’s Castle central stone
“That big white stone at the centre seems to always have been there, and it’s important that that remains in place - you can even see it on the Google Earth images of the location! ”
Image of Giant’s Castle Maze by Jeff Saward, 2017.
As with much of the research we do on Scilly, our first port of call to find our about who made Giant’s Castle Maze and when, was to talk to Teän’s grandad Frank, a born and bred Scillonian who has lived on St Mary’s all his life.
Frank told us that the maze had not been there when he was a little boy (he was born in 1933), but he had memories of it from around about the 1950s. Other than that he has no idea where it had come from, and when asked to take a guess about who he thought might have built it, he said:
“There was a military base there during the war, so perhaps soldiers built it then. Or maybe it was kids on holiday.”
We then got talking about the central stone in the middle, wondering where it had come from. He said that there used to be a lot of large pieces of white quartz on Old Town Beach, which he had helped a neighbour to bring up to the bank at the top of the beach with his tractor, so they could be used for seats. Frank said these stones were unusual…
“Well you wouldn’t think of Old Town Beach being somewhere you would find big lumps of white quartz, would you? I wondered if they had been used to make grave stones there in the church yard. Anyway, we pulled them up with the tractor and put them on the bank.”
This was only about 20 years ago, but perhaps the central stone from the Giant’s Castle Maze also came from Old Town Beach at an earlier date.
We went to speak to the neighbour who was interested in the Old Town Beach quartz - half hoping that he would say that he had built the maze with this quartz central stone - but he also had no idea who had made it. He did show us the quartz though, and we took photographs to compare with the central stone out at Giant’s Castle.
One of the large pieces of bright white quartz from Old Town Beach - possibly for making grave stones.
Crystalline geodes in the quartz stone from Old Town Beach. Pulled up with Frank’s tractor circa 2004.
A quick walk through the nearby churchyard likely disproved the quarts-used-as-gravestone theory. We only found one small quartz grave marker, all the rest were marble, which would make sense as marble is far easier to work with than quartz. But nevertheless, the choice by someone to leave this piece of white quartz on the grave of a loved-one, not to mention the great effort used to bring the other pieces up onto the bank with the tractor, confirms that there is something beautiful and compelling about this white crystal rock. It may well have been the choice of the Giant’s Castle Maze-maker to use some of this quartz as the special centrepiece for their labyrinth. I want to research what quartz crystals have historically been used for - both scientifically and spiritually - in order to better understand these choices.
A quartz stone marking a grave in Old Town Churchyard, St Mary’s.
On the approach to Giant’s Castle from Old Town Beach we found a quarts deposit crossing the path. These were likely distributed during the last ice age, when Scilly acquired much of its geology via the movement of glaciers (I mean I guess? My knowledge of geology is patchy to say the least, and we would be very keen to talk to any geologists who know Scilly well - if you can help please get in touch at scilly.labyrinth.project@gmail.com). The quarts crystals continued over the cliff edge, so we climbed down to investigate, and found a dislodged piece for comparison.
Quartz crystals sticking though the edge of the path to the maze.
Lumps of quarts lodged in the ram at the cliff edge.
Some fallen quartz lumps, dislodged by coastal erosion.
One of these fallen pieces to compare to the central maze stone.
When compared to the stone at the centre of the maze, we found that neither of these quartz crystals seemed to be a good colour match…
The photos we had of the quarts at Old Town Beach showed that this was far whiter than the central stone. The white crystalline geodes present in the rock’s makeup were also missing from the Giant’s Castle stone.
In contrast the quarts that we found eroded from the cliffside was too orange. The central stone is a greyer type of quartz than both of these, so we supposed it must have come from somewhere else. Not Old Town Beach, not the cliffside to the west of Giant’s Castle, but a secret third place as yet unknown.
We also noticed that the orange-tinted quartz, freshly fallen from the cliff, was much sharper edged than the maze crystal. This made us realise that our central stone - with it’s smooth-tumbled edges, must have spent some time in the sea before being placed in the centre of the labyrinth, to soften its once sharp corners.
Comparing the central maze stone (grey) to the quarts found from the cliff nearby, to the west of Giant’s Castle.
So, while we are - unfortunately - no closer to discovering who made the Giant’s Castle maze, or finding the exact location that the quartz stone came from, this day made us think differently about the importance of the central stone. We now know that it must have spent some time in the sea, in order to acquire its softened contours, and that it must have been dragged up here - despite it’s large size - for some reason, perhaps due to it’s beauty or some special qualities of the quartz. This makes us wonder what the significance of quartz is - perhaps this mineral possesses some qualities that were important to the labyrinth maker? Or perhaps the quartz stone was added to the site later, to aid to the site’s magical or meditative qualities?
As with a lot of our research so far into Scilly’s mazes, we found more questions than answers today, but our search continues. If you would like to see more of our research, share any information of your own, or just learn more about the project, please check out out What’s On? page for the dates of our upcoming sharing events at the Old Town Inn on St Mary’s and online.
