Hampton Court Maze
Hampton Court Maze is one of the most famous and visited hedge mazes in the world, planted around 1700 within the magnificent grounds of Hampton Court Palace beside the Thames in Surrey. The maze was commissioned during the reign of King William III as part of a series of formal garden features that transformed the palace grounds into one of the great baroque landscapes of late seventeenth-century England. It was designed to entertain and mildly confuse the courtiers and aristocratic guests who strolled the palace gardens, reflecting a fashion for elaborate garden puzzles that had swept across Europe from the Netherlands and France. The maze covers approximately a third of an acre and uses a combination of hornbeam and yew hedges that have grown to form dense, towering walls of green. The overall route from entrance to centre and back is less than half a mile, but the tightly interlocking paths create a disorienting experience that can take surprisingly experienced visitors much longer than expected to navigate. The design is a classic multicursal maze with several decision points, meaning there is no single correct path but rather a network of choices, dead ends and looping passages. Hampton Court Maze earned lasting literary fame in Jerome K. Jerome's comic novel Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, in which the protagonist leads a growing crowd deeper and deeper into the maze before eventually requiring a keeper to rescue them all. The passage remains one of the funniest descriptions of maze confusion ever written and has helped keep the maze in popular culture for more than a century. For those who grow impatient with puzzling, there is a practical tip that has been passed between generations of visitors: turning left at each junction will eventually guide you to the centre, though it won't necessarily take you out again efficiently. Many visitors choose simply to give up on strategy and enjoy the experience of being genuinely lost within a garden rather than solving it like a puzzle. The maze is set within the broader palace gardens, which also include the Great Fountain Garden, the Privy Garden and the famous Pond Garden, all of which can be explored on the same visit. The restored Baroque interiors of Hampton Court Palace itself house magnificent royal apartments, the Great Hall and painted ceilings by Antonio Verrio. Visitors can easily spend a full day exploring the palace and its extensive grounds. The maze is open to visitors throughout the year except during certain special events, and is included in the general Hampton Court Palace admission. The combination of the palace's rich Tudor and Stuart history and the maze's enduring appeal makes Hampton Court one of the most enjoyable day trips from central London.