Bristol, drawn from its own streets.

Bristol on paper

That double channel is the whole composition. The Avon was diverted into an artificial cut south of the city so the harbour could hold its water at a constant level, and the result on paper is a long island of streets with water around all of it — an accident of engineering that looks deliberate when drawn. West of the centre the Avon leaves through the gorge, a narrowing corridor with almost nothing built in it, and the suspension bridge crosses at the point where the streets stop on both sides.

Around the harbour the street pattern changes character several times inside a very small area. The old centre is a knot of short medieval streets. Clifton, up on the west, is Georgian: crescents, terraces and squares drawn as long curves, the most graphic street pattern in the city. South of the New Cut, Bedminster and the streets behind it are Victorian rows at a completely different grain, tight and parallel. Between them the radial roads climb out of the basin in every direction, which is why Bristol looks on paper like several towns that grew into each other — because that is what happened.

The parks read as pale blocks: Brandon Hill above the harbour, Castle Park where the bombed centre was left open, Queen Square as a perfect green rectangle with its diagonals. At six and a half kilometres across all of that fits with room to spare, so the frame is generous — bring it in to two and the harbour alone fills the sheet, with every basin and lock legible.