Photo: Sandy Gerrard (CC BY-SA 2.0)
A self-guided audio walk through Bury St Edmunds, the town that grew around the shrine of a king. It begins in the grid of streets laid out by Abbot Baldwin after the Conquest: Moyse's Hall, a twelfth-century stone house that is now the town museum, Robert Adam's Market Cross, the Corn Exchange and the Nutshell, often claimed as the smallest pub in Britain. Across Angel Hill, where Dickens stayed and sent Mr Pickwick, the Abbey Gate built after the townspeople burned the old one in 1327 leads into the Abbey Gardens and the ruins: the west front with houses built into it, and the site of Edmund's shrine, where barons swore in 1214 to compel King John to grant their liberties. The walk ends with St Edmundsbury Cathedral and its Millennium Tower, the twelfth-century Norman Tower, St Mary's, burial place of Mary Tudor, Queen of France, and the Regency Theatre Royal.
13 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 · 75 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 19 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.
Moyse's Hall and the Cornhill, Market Cross, Corn Exchange, The Nutshell.
Angel Hill and the Angel Hotel, Abbey Gate, The Abbey Gardens and the precinct, The abbey church and the west front, Edmund's shrine and the barons' oath.
St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Norman Tower, St Mary's Church, Theatre Royal.
A late-twelfth-century flint house of unconfirmed purpose, later a gaol and since 1899 the town museum.
A pawnbroker turned a gap in The Traverse into a beerhouse from 1857; its bar is about 15 feet by 7, with a mummified cat above it.
The gatehouse that replaced the one townspeople burned in 1327, with its carved west façade facing Angel Hill.
Where barons swore on the high altar in November 1214 to compel King John to grant the liberties of Henry I's charter.
The civic church with its angel roof, where Mary Tudor, Queen of France, was reburied in 1538.
William Wilkins's Regency playhouse of 1819, used to store barrels from 1925, where Charley's Aunt was first performed in 1892.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 13 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. 13 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 Bury St Edmunds — the Abbey of St Edmund and the Barons' Oath, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
13 narration points, including Moyse's Hall and the Cornhill, Market Cross, Angel Hill and the Angel Hotel, Abbey Gate and The Abbey Gardens and the precinct. That is about 25 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. 13 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.