gardendesigntravels:

The Chevening Maze Garden in Kent England  is the first multiply-connected puzzle maze.

In the 1820s Earl Stanhope, an eminent mathematician, designed at least three mazes, and the surviving example at Chevening House, England, shows the first serious application of mathematics to the design of mazes. Stanhope recognized that most mazes can be solved by the ‘hand on wall’ method of always turning in the same direction, because the vast majority of earlier maze designs, although multicursal, effectively only consisted of a single wall, albeit with numerous branches. Based on the medieval labyrinth design with a number of breaks in the walls at junctions, the Chevening Maze contains a number of totally discrete sections of hedge, stacked within a perimeter hedge, which most importantly is not in contact with the goal at the centre. This not only produced a maze which is difficult to solve, but also contains few dead-ends.

The Earl of Stanhope was a mathematician who applied his knowledge of maths and map making to maze design. It was he who realised that he could defeat those who navigate by keeping one hand on the wall, by the introduction of the Island Maze. His designs often had a number of islands, or just isolated lengths of hedge, within the maze.