How York Maze's Tom Pearcy found his way

IT IS often said there is no future in farming, but Tom Pearcy seems to have found a way to make his land profitable.

While many farmers have taken to bed and breakfast or turning their fields into campsites, Tom has transformed 20 acres near Elvington into a giant tourist attraction.

More than a million maize plants make up the York Maze, which is the size of 15 Wembley football pitches. With a different design every year, it attracts visitors in hordes.

There have been Star Trek tributes, a Statue of Liberty ten times larger than the original, and last summer the field was fashioned into a Spitfire to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

Although the maze stands centre stage, there is even more on offer, including the UK’s largest inflatable slide, a petting farm with pig racing, and an electric quad bike track.

Not to mention the ice-cream huts.

It was a brave move eight years ago when Tom launched York Maze in Heslington. He had been working away in Suffolk, but when he returned home to a smaller farm, the money wasn’t there. To make matters worse, BSE struck and his entire beef herd had to be destroyed.

“That lost us an income stream and left us with 400 acres of arable farming which is very seasonal,” says Tom. “So I was looking around for other things to challenge me mentally, as well as bringing in some more income.”

During his time away, Tom often drove past a Fenland farm in the middle of nowhere. One day at the gate was a scruffy hand-painted sign which said ‘maize maze’. Curiosity got the better of him and he decided to stop and take a look. Sadly, the maze turned out to be fairly amateurish and he didn’t think much more about it.

Back home though, that chance encounter proved to be a life-changing moment. Tom was eating lunch one afternoon while sitting on top of a hill overlooking the Heslington fields. He was pondering life in general and thoughts returned to the farm in the Fens.

“I suddenly thought, ‘This would make a great place for a maze.’ It had a south-facing slope, and was close to a large population. From there the whole plan just came together really.”

Since that day York Maze has become a firm favourite among York’s tourist destinations and quickly turned into Tom’s core business, with the rest of the farm contracted to neighbours.

It is a sobering thought that the maze soon began to generate more money during its two-month season than the rest of the acreage put together.

“I suppose I’ve moved away from diversified farming to a stand-alone business. Whether you’d still call this farming or visitor attraction, I’m not sure really. I do still farm and the land is used to grow, but now the income comes from people rather than crops.”

Tom’s original farm was tenanted and when campus three at the University of York came on line, he was given notice to quit. As fate would have it, that was also a turning point.

“I was at a bit of a crossroads really, then this land came up and I began to think about the maze being a separate business. The move was a catalyst for taking the business forward and even if we hadn’t been asked to move I think we were at the point where we needed to do something.”

Visitor numbers were rising steadily, but the Heslington farm didn’t have the facilities Tom thought he needed. The new site, on the other hand, had buildings the previous one lacked and for which Tom would have struggled to gain planning permission.

More importantly, he could invest in his own land, not someone else’s.

Tom designs his maze on a computer and turns model into reality when the crop is no more than a few inches high. At first it was an arduous process involving graph paper, sticks and string. Patterns were restricted to simple symmetrical shapes and it all took a long time to make.

In 2006, he began to use GPS mapping which helped remove many obstacles to his creativity. Now he produces his design, transfers it to the GPS, then walks the field making a series of marks.

A man follows him on a cultivator and cuts into the plants where he has made the mark, and this allows the maze to grow into the correct pattern. “Essentially it ends up being a giant dot-to-dot and the frightening thing is just how quickly the maize grows. It can be a foot and a half a week.”

Tom says GPS has made things a lot easier and now he can make freeform curves where everything before had to be a perfect circle, triangle or straight line.

At the moment he is still whittling down his short list and this year’s design will not be revealed until the summer press launch. One thing we are promised for 2011 is a 3-D version, with bridges allowing pathways to cross one another.

Aside from the annual maze design, Tom concentrates much of his time and investment on Hallowe’en and Hallowscream, “a journey to the dark side for a terrifyingly entertaining night to remember”.

“It’s a market that’s growing hugely in the UK and to be honest is something I really enjoy. It’s great fun scaring people.

“With the maze, some people like it to be really challenging, but the majority don’t want it to be hard; they want to have fun, wander around, get lost for a bit and then find their way around again.”

The secret to York Maze’s success is originality and, for his efforts, Tom picked up the Attraction of the Year trophy at the 2010 York Tourism Awards. Next month he’s hosting the finale for the 26th Viking Festival, where 200 re-enactors will stage a dramatic battle before burning a longship.

“I wouldn’t say the maze is done, we keep adding bits but I think we’ve achieved want we wanted. I never imagined where we would be now; nobody plans these things. But it’s great to have somewhere we own and to do something worthwhile with it.”

Just think if he hadn’t stopped off at that farm in the middle of nowhere.