Not a hedge maze of the formal garden variety, but a turf maze, cut and built from the earth itself, a type of labyrinth formed by low banks of sod arranged into a walking pattern. It was known locally as the Walls of Troy, a name that turns up on turf mazes elsewhere in Britain and Ireland and seems to carry some old folk memory of winding, inescapable paths.

The maze at Ballynavortha was recorded by Liam Price in 1958, who noted an arrangement of low grass banks on a farm in the area. A sketch made by Healy around 1957 shows it as a rectangular labyrinth measuring roughly 24.4 metres by 26.4 metres, a modest but deliberate piece of ground-shaping. Turf mazes of this kind are relatively rare survivals anywhere in these islands. They required no mortar or stonework, just the careful piling and cutting of sod, which also means they were always vulnerable to agricultural activity. This one did not survive. The monument was levelled in 1990 and nothing of it remains above ground.

What is left, then, is the documentation: a mid-century sketch, a place-name, and the knowledge that somewhere on this Wicklow hillside a community once maintained a structure unusual enough to be remembered and named. The Walls of Troy is now a trace in the archive rather than a feature in the landscape.