Photo: The original uploader was Paul W Wells at English Wikipedia. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
A self-guided audio tour of Audley End House and the town of Saffron Walden. The house was built between 1605 and 1614 for Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, on the scale of a royal palace; Charles the Second bought it, and it was cut down to a third of its size in the eighteenth century. The tour starts on the west front above the River Cam, widened by Capability Brown into a lake, then goes inside to the Great Hall and its two-storey oak screen, the Saloon, Robert Adam's rooms of the 1760s, and the service wing as it was in the early 1880s, with the story of the Polish agents trained here in the Second World War. Outside: the stable block, the walled kitchen garden and its vine house, the parterre of 1831 to 1832 and the Temple of Concord. Then about a kilometre and a half into Saffron Walden for Bridge End Gardens and its yew maze, St Mary's Church, Walden Castle and the museum, the pargeted Sun Inn, the Market Place and the turf maze on the Common, recorded in 1699.
14 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 · 51 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 20 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 west front, the Cam and Capability Brown's park, The Great Hall and the Saloon, The Adam rooms, The service wing: the kitchen, the dairy and the laundry.
The stable block, The walled kitchen garden and the vine house, The parterre and the east front, Temple of Concord.
Bridge End Gardens and the hedge maze, St Mary the Virgin, Saffron Walden, Walden Castle and Saffron Walden Museum, The Sun Inn and its pargeting, The Market Place and the Corn Exchange, The turf maze on the Common.
The front of the house Thomas Howard built on a royal scale, facing the Cam that Brown widened into a lake.
A two-storey carved oak screen, and a Saloon ceiling of ships, waves and sea creatures from the early seventeenth century.
The kitchen, dairy and laundries as they were in the early 1880s, when Avis Crocombe ran the kitchen.
Built in 1790 to mark George the Third's recovery, answering Adam's Temple of Victory across the valley.
Freehand plasterwork of 1676, with two armed figures that tradition calls Tom Hickathrift and the Wisbech Giant.
A brick-lined turf labyrinth of seventeen circuits, its cutting paid for by the town in 1699, about a mile from edge to centre.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 14 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. 14 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 Audley End — the Jacobean Prodigy House, Capability Brown's Park and Saffron Walden, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
14 narration points, including The west front, the Cam and Capability Brown's park, The Great Hall and the Saloon, The Adam rooms, The service wing: the kitchen, the dairy and the laundry and The stable block. That is about 28 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 ~3½ hours with the walk into town total, but you walk at your own pace. 14 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.