City of Troy

Reading Sig Lonegren's book on labyrinths today, he writes briefly about the city of troy labyrinth, near Brandsby in North Yorkshire, and notes a lack of 'feeling' to the location which he attributes to the fact that it is a 19th century replacement of an earlier labyrinth that was located nearby.

I have visited this particular labyrinth several times, this picture shows it the first time I saw it, in the snow after climbing up to the Castle Howard pyramid some years ago. The drive to the labyrinth was ridiculous, we could barely stay clinging to the road and you couldn't tell which part was road and which was field. We found it up a slippery hill eventually, on a verge between two tiny villages. We stayed as long as we could in thefreezing cold, partly because the glittering undulations on the snowy path of the labyrinth was unbearably pretty in the moonlight, and partly because we knew we had to drive back down the slippy hill to possible death. 

As I'm not a dowser I can't say if the labyrinth had given me any signs of being inauthentic but perhaps the pilgrimage to the site endowed it with some kind of myth that might not have previously been there had we chanced upon it by mistake. 

My second visit to Dalby was a few years later, all being opposite, around midsummer. I think turf labyrinths are intended to be visited in the summer months, for one it probably doesn't do them any good walking them when the grass is at it's low ebb. 

The labyrinth was much easier to get to, although still quite good at hiding on the side of the road. 

The game of troy being linked with Scandinavia in the information given at the site is interesting, I always liked the Scandinavian folklore of stone labyrinths being used to trap malevolent spirits before voyages, the sailors would run to the centre of a labyrinth and then jump out, leaving the spirit behind. The game of troy pictured on the Tragliatella wine-server seems to show one of the riders leaving the maze carrying a strange, wizened creature:

The strange creature riding out doesn't seem to be off-putting for the couples on the other side of the picture, so perhaps it isn't intended to be as hideous as it turned out. 

The thought that the authenticity of an ancient site comes with some kind of curse, a spirit that follows you home, is not unknown to me. At the very least, spending long periods of time in an ancient, inhabited cave meant I took home a number of gigantic cave spiders in my backpack. To be on the safe side, I suggest leaping from the centre of any labyrinth you walk, even Saffron Walden, to make sure nothing follows you home.

I'm always interested to see labyrinths put to use, this webpage shows the Whitewater Mesa labyrinth, walked on horseback. 

Tutelar of the Place

The Tutelar of the Place (David Jones) by larkfall

Horsforth Low Hall Cup and Ring stone

These stones were found during the renovation of Low Hall in Horsforth, down a stretch of road rarely traveled. The abandoned Clariant pharmacological factory and desolate workers' houses block the Aire from view, walking further along the footpath you reach suddenly farmland, pastoral scenes and snaking bend of river that coils unexpectedly into the landscape. The woods here are very beautiful, with a well near the footpath and copious flora and fauna

It doesn't seem like cup and ring territory, no height nor grave to accompany this one. I would be interested to know of any other C+R markings low down by large rivers, I know of quite a few standing stones beside rivers (the Devil's Arrows for example) but no rock art. The stone was placed in a rock garden at Kirkstall Abbey, until it was moved back to Horsforth to accompany the millenium stone opposite the museum, slightly further up the hill but still not probably it's original height.

Cup and ring marks also exist on stones in woods close to Horsforth station, near where the youthful viking head watches over the southern entrance to Bramhope tunnel. Perhaps the rock was carted down from one of these higher points during the building of Low Hall in 1575, especially as there was a quarry near here on the 1851 OS map.

Also near the Horsforth railway line is a place called Troy, now a housing estate. It shows on the1851 map as open fields, perhaps this has some history as the site of a labyrinth?

Labyrinths

The maze-like corridor systems of asylums for the mentally ill remind me of the twists and angles of a labyrinth, ultimately the patients entered through the same grandiose administration blocks, with the repeated clock towers' eye recording the moment, and mostly they stayed there till death, living out the same daily patterns, a series of monotonous movements designed to instill a sense of quiet unquestioning confusion.

Once at High Royds asylum, I climbed through a broken window while my friend waited outside. As I stood inside the corridor waiting for her to step through the sash window slid upwards of its own accord. We carried on regardless, she stepped through the portal as if nothing had happened, although a fear lay inside me of what would happen if the sash flew back down with some kind of supernatural force.

I have wandered those corridors for many hours looking for a mirror that shows me who I really am. The way we search in each other's souls for a deeper truth than we see in our own, a sentence more poignant for its distance from our own hand. Those we have lost we immortalise in moments that are tied to these places. Upon returning to the ever-decreasing maze of passageways left at the hospital I recalled conversations, episodes of time which replay in my mind as I walked through thorn-littered hallways. The ghosts lost in a dream High Royds are very familiar, the place I know in my sleep has windows which close behind us and never let us leave, trapped together in a comic tableaux of our own creation. We left a stain on the slab which cannot be washed clean.