Tracing the Stones
- Rob Vickery
- Jul 20
- 5 min read
The Labyrinths of the Isles of Scilly
I have long been fascinated by mazes and labyrinths. Not the puzzle kind you find in children’s books, but the ones etched into the land, where stones mark out slow-turning spirals that seem to belong to time itself. There is something deeply calming about them. They appear in folklore, in pilgrimage routes, and sometimes without explanation at all. So when I learned that the Isles of Scilly hold the largest known collection of stone labyrinths in Britain, I wanted to know more.
What I didn’t expect was how complex their stories would be. Some are well recorded. Some are modern. Some are just memories. The only one I have visited in person is the Troy Town Maze on St Agnes. The rest I have explored through desk-based research, old photographs, and the careful records of researchers like Jeff Saward, whose Labyrinthos Archive has been invaluable. This is not a guidebook. It is more of a meander, a way of walking through the stories, the evidence, and the questions these places leave behind.
The Troy Town Maze on St Agnes
St Agnes, the southernmost inhabited island in the Scilly group, is home to what is often said to be the oldest of these labyrinths: the Troy Town Maze. It lies just above the sea on the western edge of the island, not far from the lighthouse. From above, it looks like a coiled ammonite, a seven-ring classical labyrinth made from small, rounded beach stones. It is a single path with no choices, winding inward and outward again. The name Troy Town comes from a much older tradition, referring to the ancient city of Troy, whose streets were said to be so cunningly laid out that invaders who entered could not find their way out.
This type of design is not unique to Scilly. You will find similar labyrinths along the coasts of Sweden, Norway, and Russia. In Scandinavia, they are often placed near the sea and linked with folk practices meant to bring luck or ensure fair winds. Some were walked before sailing. Others were believed to trap spirits. Whether the St. Agnes labyrinth was ever used in this way is unclear, but the connection to the sea feels natural.
The origin of the Troy Town Maze is difficult to pin down. Most printed accounts trace it to a man named Amor Clarke, the son of a lighthouse keeper, who is said to have built the labyrinth in 1729. Some say 1726. One family claims the stones once spelled out his name and the date beside the maze, now lost. Others argue he was not the creator, but someone who restored an earlier structure already half buried in the turf.
The earliest photograph of the maze dates to 1885, taken by Gibson and Sons, and shows the design in a near-perfect classical form. That image alone suggests it was already well established by then. The first printed reference came two years later in a local guidebook, which described it as “a curious enclosure” designed to reflect the fabled streets of Troy. Several folklorists echoed this view, including M. A. Courtney, who remarked in 1887 that many complex places in Cornwall were casually referred to as “Troy Town.”
Debate over the maze’s age and purpose carried on through the twentieth century. Some believed it was a much older structure, perhaps built by Scandinavian sailors or medieval traders. Geoffrey Grigson suggested a Viking origin. Others stood by the story of Clarke. One letter published in The Scillonian in the 1950s even described him as a shipwrecked sailor from Rotherhithe who married into a local family. Every version adds a layer, but no one has yet found firm evidence for any of them.
Things came to a head in 1988 when a group of well-meaning volunteers decided to “restore” the maze. At the time, the structure had become quite worn from visitors’ feet. Stones had been dislodged, and the layout had become hard to follow. The group believed they had found traces of an earlier labyrinth beneath the visible one and used this as justification to dig up and rebuild it. The result was a larger maze, slightly rotated and moved a little from its original location. No archaeological record was made, and no photos were taken of the supposed older structure. The act caused a stir. Letters flooded in. Some saw it as vandalism. Others called it preservation. The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
Desk-Based Discoveries
The rest of Scilly’s labyrinths I have come to know only through research. They are scattered across the islands. On Gugh, I found reference to two small spirals built in the 1980s. One still survives near Dropnose Porth, slightly overgrown but still there. On St Mary’s, the main island, a six-metre spiral near Giant’s Castle includes a chunk of white quartz at its centre. Locals recall it being there around 1950, though its origin remains undocumented. An earlier maze, seen in a National Geographic photo from the 1960s, appears to have vanished entirely.
Memory and Meaning
That is what has struck me most. These mazes are not ancient temples. They are not fixed monuments. They are part of a living landscape, made, walked, and sometimes forgotten. Some might last a few years. A few centuries. They change. They return. And yet the impulse to make them continues.
The Troy Town Maze is the anchor of this story, but it is not the end of it. The field on St Martin’s is just as meaningful in its own way. So is the nearly vanished spiral on Gugh. Together, they offer a glimpse into how people mark space, how patterns are passed on, and how something as simple as a path of stones can hold memory.
The magic of these mazes is in their very being and purpose. You can touch them. You can walk them. You can build them. That alone is worth the time seeking them out in this absolutely breathtaking place.
An extra special thank you also goes to Teän Roberts and Layan Harman, the artists behind the Scilly Labyrinth project. Their thoughtful work is bringing fresh attention to these spaces, not only through cultural programming across the islands, but also through the physical restoration of the Giant’s Castle maze on St Mary’s. It is a community project in the best sense, lifting up the memory and meaning of Scilly’s labyrinths and making sure they continue to have a place in the present as well as the past.