54.7753°N / 1.5849°W · United Kingdom
Most towns on these prints have to be explained. This one explains itself: the oldest part sits up there, and it is up there for exactly the reason you can see.
You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.
Follow the water round: it comes down from one side, swings out, comes back and very nearly closes. The neck it leaves is narrow, and that is where the bridges are, one at each end. Inside the loop the ground rises, and a band of woodland follows the banks the whole way, so the peninsula is drawn twice over, once by the water and once by the trees. Around it, the valley stays a green corridor; the modern town has spilled south onto a plateau and north along one main road.
At the centre of the peninsula, a pale open space. That is where the cathedral and the castle stand, shoulder to shoulder around a green. Neither will appear on your print, because stone and curtain walls are not drawn on these base maps, and normally that would be a real loss. Here it is not. What made this place was never the buildings, it was the loop of water that let them be built safely at all, and the loop is exactly what the map does draw.
Two surfaces, and they do the same work from opposite sides: the water of the loop, and the woodland that lines it. Set them close in value and the peninsula reads as one clean shape lifted out of the page. Set them far apart and you get a ribbon of water with a green edge, which is prettier but says less. We would keep them close. The open ground at the centre should stay the lightest thing on the sheet: it is where the town began.
Portrait, the loop filling the height. This is one of the few prints in the collection that wants to be close: pull back and the meander floats in a suburb that has nothing to say, and the shape stops being the subject. Come in until the loop nearly touches the margins and the whole page becomes one figure.
The title, one line under it, the coordinates. The name of a bridge, a century rather than a year, the name of a saint: that line carries the cathedral, since the white ground cannot.
In the tenth century, the community of Saint Cuthbert, seeking refuge from Viking raids, settled inside this loop of the river. The steep banks were the defence: nothing else was needed. Every later decision on this map follows from that one, and the loop you are looking at is the reason it was taken.
The castle was raised at the end of the eleventh century on the orders of William the Conqueror, and became the stronghold of the prince-bishops of Durham, near-autonomous rulers in exchange for guarding the northern border. On your print it is white ground on a peninsula. On the ground it held a border for four centuries.
Built between the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century to house the relics of Cuthbert and Bede, the cathedral is the largest and finest Norman building in England, and the daring of its vaulting looked ahead to the Gothic. It shares the peninsula with the castle, around a single green. Your print gives that green and keeps the rest for the caption.
Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.
From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.
Four, from the barest to the most dressed.
Allow 1 to 4 working days for making, up to 7 for hand-assembled frames and canvases, then 1 to 6 working days in transit with standard delivery.
Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece is emailed to you as soon as you order.
The path round the banks under the trees, the climb up from the bridge, the green between the two great buildings. The loop is the same for everyone. Which way round you walked it is not.
Compose my Durham print
