Nell PenhallowBenchmarks

Benchmarks

Essays on maps, names, and the ground beneath them.

I’m Nell Penhallow. For twenty-three years I made maps for the Ordnance Survey. Now I live in Newlyn, at the bottom of every hill in Britain, and write about what the map leaves out. More about me.

The latest essay

263Whitesand BayWoon GumpusBM 53.150505010010010015015015015015020020020010036363737383839394040414142424343343433333232
Woon Gumpus Common, PenwithSW 3960 3320 Nothing Shown On the empty squares, the places where the map has nothing to say, and a long Tuesday I spent sitting in one of them. Read the essay · 4 minutes

Gazetteer of earlier essays

  1. NH 9910 1150 Drawing the Hill Before the computers, contours were cut by hand into coated film with a jewelled point. I learned on a hill I had never seen, and last summer I finally went to stand on it. Meall a’ Bhuachaille, Cairngorms · 5 min
  2. SW 4210 3640 Pity Me, and Other Places For eleven years my job was to ask people what things were called. They didn’t always tell me the truth, and the names were better for it. Penwith, Cornwall · 4 min
  3. No grid reference Trap Streets On a town that existed because a map said so, and on the smaller, kinder lies that every honest map has to tell. Agloe, New York · 5 min
  4. SW 4683 2844 The Zero at Newlyn Every height on every map of mainland Britain is measured from a hut at the end of a pier. I moved here, partly, to be near it. Newlyn, Cornwall · 5 min