Photo: Chris Thomas-Atkin (CC BY-SA 2.0)
A self-guided audio walk through Arundel, a hill town between a castle and a river port. It begins at the bridge that marked the upper limit of the port, where ships once came up the Arun from Littlehampton, and the ruins long called the Maison Dieu that turn out to be the Dominican friary. Up the High Street and the Square to the Duke of Norfolk's Norman-style Town Hall of 1838, then St Nicholas Church, one building holding an Anglican parish church and the Catholic Fitzalan Chapel, divided by a wall that went to court in the 1870s and is now glass. Next the cathedral the 15th Duke commissioned in 1868, with the shrine of St Philip Howard, then Maltravers Street, where the duke's steward lived, and the brewery and printworks of Tarrant Street. The walk ends at Arundel Castle, Roger de Montgomery's motte and the Howards' home, and the old millpond of Swanbourne Lake, a kilometre along Mill Road. About 2.5 km on foot.
10 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 21 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 7 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
The River Arun and the Port of Arundel, Maison Dieu and the Blackfriars, High Street and the Square, Arundel Town Hall.
St Nicholas Church and the Fitzalan Chapel, Cathedral of Our Lady and St Philip Howard, Maltravers Street, Tarrant Street.
Arundel Castle, Swanbourne Lake.
The quay where cross-Channel and coastal ships moored from the thirteenth century until the trade faded after the 1840s.
Ruins long signed as the Maison Dieu that are in fact the Dominican friary, there before 1253.
One building, two churches: an Anglican nave and the Catholic Fitzalan Chapel, seen through glass and a medieval grille.
Joseph Hansom's French Gothic church of 1868, a cathedral since 1965, with the shrine of St Philip Howard.
Roger de Montgomery's motte and bailey, home of the Howards, largely rebuilt by the 15th Duke and completed in 1900.
The castle's old millpond in a chalk valley, documented from the eleventh century and enlarged in the late eighteenth.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 10 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 10 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Arundel — the Castle of the Howards, the Divided Church and the Port on the Arun, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
10 narration points, including The River Arun and the Port of Arundel, Maison Dieu and the Blackfriars, High Street and the Square, Arundel Town Hall and St Nicholas Church and the Fitzalan Chapel. That is about 21 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1 hour total, but you walk at your own pace. 10 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.