For at least the last two millennia, the courses and character of the rivers Avon, Frome and Malago have influenced the location and shape of urban development in Bristol.
For the last 1000 years, this has been a decidedly two-way process, with Bristolian engineers ambitiously reshaping the river system to suit their needs, and these changes having further impacts in turn on the social and physical fabric of the city.
This video explores this cycle of mutualistic influence, mostly via the medium of badly drawn maps.
0:00 Introduction
5:19 450,000 years ago
7:00 Iron Age and Roman era
8:45 Saxon era
14:20 The digging of St Augustine's Reach
20:12 Creation of the Floating Harbour
24:52 Putting rivers underground
27:35 Restoring them again?
28:48 Outro and credits
Sources, credits and transcript: https://pedestriandiversions.github.io/videos/bristol-rivers.html