King Charles loves nature and spending time in it, so why not combine it all with a hobby from his childhood? The king has now implemented this idea in the form of labyrinths.
He is the king of labyrinths: Charles. Even as a child, he loved to stroll through a maze to find the exit. “He spent hours on this bizarre hobby, which is said to have amused his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, greatly,” royal expert Jennie Bond told “OK!”.
Over the decades, the labyrinths from his childhood in the gardens of the royal estates were dismantled, a shame, as the king apparently finds it. So he simply rebuilt them. In 2016, his project to bring the labyrinths back to life began with a maze at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, now followed by an impressive maze at Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire and one near Sandringham in Norfolk.
The latter was inspired by a maze from King Charles’ childhood, while the one at Dumfries House has a Japanese pagoda in the middle and the one at Balmoral is shaped like the Scottish national flower, the thistle. The mazes are also open to the public, but King Charles also aims to leave a royal legacy with the mazes.
King Charles wants to pass on his childhood hobby to his grandchildren
He himself reportedly still loves wandering through them, but he also gets a lot of pleasure from watching his grandchildren romp around in the mazes. The design of the labyrinth at Sandringham is reminiscent of yew trees and was inspired by his own childhood memories. The king, a passionate gardener, reportedly also sees the complicated, square-shaped labyrinth as a “homage to geometry and cosmological symbolism,” writes Tatler.
Work on the Lower Maze Garden in Sandringham started in January 2023. Sandringham’s head gardener Jack Linfield told the Daily Mail that designing the maze was “very exciting” for him and the King. He said at the opening of his first maze in 2016: “I have to admit that I am following my childhood fantasy of mazes. There is nothing more beautiful than getting lost in a maze.”
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I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
