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The Common Maze
Seventeen turns of turf, one ash tree, and gallons of beer.
See it clearly
- What's there
- England's largest turf maze cut into the grass
- Legend from
- Recorded 1699
- Tone
- Curious
Saffron Walden Common: young men once raced this ancient turf maze for gallons of beer.
On Saffron Walden Common lies the largest surviving turf labyrinth in England: a path of 17 circuits with four bastions. Town accounts record 15 shillings paid for cutting it in 1699. Local tradition held that it copies an older and larger maze, and Richard Gough noted a story that a shoemaker made it. An 18th-century manuscript, quoted by W.H. Matthews in 1922, called it a favourite haunt of the town's young bloods, with rules and wagers in gallons of beer for walking it. An ash tree once stood on the central mound until it was burned on 5 November 1823. The local history society argues it was a 1699 civic amenity rather than a pagan survival.