Randoll Coate

Gilbert Randoll Coate (8 October 1909 – 2 December 2005) was a British diplomat, maze designer and "labyrinthologist".

The son of Charles Philip Coate, an expatriate businessman, Randoll Coate was born in Lausanne, Switzerland.

After studying at the Collège de Lausanne he won a scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford, reading French and German.

In 1940 he was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps, using his language abilities to interrogate prisoners of war in the "London Cage".

He also took part in Operation Archery, a commando raid on port Vågsøy, Norway and helped support Greek resistance fighters in liberating Kalamata.

In 1955, Coate married the painter, Pamela Dugdale Moore, with whom he raised two daughters, Caroline and Penelope.

He was also made a Chevalier of the Ordre de Léopold in 1965 and appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) in 1966.

After the war, Coate joined the UK Foreign Office with diplomatic postings to Salonika, Oslo, Leopoldville, Rome, The Hague, Buenos Aires, Stockholm and finally Brussels at which point he took early retirement in 1967.

Having had a long-standing interest in art and history, Coate took to designing mazes and completed over 50 new mazes in Britain and around the world.

Coate's maze designs are particularly noted for their symbolism.

Although it is rarely possible to see a large maze in plan view, Coate's designs would often incorporate hidden shapes and references of significance to the clients who had commissioned the maze.

Coate's first maze commission, The Imprint of Man, was completed in 1975 for a private garden at Lechlade Mill in Gloucestershire.

The overall outline was of a giant footprint 57 m long by 29 m wide – a size calculated to match the size of a 300-m tall person, matching the height of the Eiffel Tower.

The hedge maze, constructed from 3,000 yew bushes, ended up too large for its intended field.

Coate's solution was to extend the maze into the adjacent river, creating an artificial island for the second toe.

The intricate design incorporated 132 symbols, including numbers, signs of the zodiac and animals, birds and fishes.

Some of his other notable mazes include;

In 1979, Coate was introduced to Adrian Fisher, another enthusiastic maze designer.

Shortly afterwards Coate and Fisher formed the maze design company Minotaur Designs and designed 15 mazes together between 1979 and 1989, (some with the landscape architect Graham Burgess in 1983 and 1984).

These included:

He died in Le Rouret, near Grasse, France, on 2 December 2005, aged 96.