Photo: Simon Burchell (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio tour from Alton to Chawton, where Jane Austen lived for the last eight years of her life and saw four of her novels into print. It begins in Alton at St Lawrence Church, where Royalist soldiers made their last stand in 1643 and the musket-ball marks are still in the doors, then the Curtis Museum and number 10 High Street, the branch of Henry Austen's bank that collapsed in 1815 and took thirteen pounds of her Mansfield Park profits with it. In Chawton it stops at the red-brick house her brother Edward gave his mother, where Jane, Cassandra and their mother moved on 7 July 1809 and where she wrote on small sheets at a twelve-sided table; Chawton House, the Great House Edward inherited, now a library of early women's writing; and St Nicholas Church, where her mother and Cassandra lie side by side in the churchyard.
6 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 · 46 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 6 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.
A Norman church where Royalist infantry fought on inside in December 1643; the musket-ball marks remain.
The Alton branch of her brother's bank, which failed in 1815 and cost her thirteen pounds of her Mansfield Park profits.
Her home from July 1809 to May 1817, where she revised Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice and wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion.
The Elizabethan house her brother Edward inherited, reopened in 2003 as a library for early women's writing.
The church rebuilt after a fire in 1871, with the graves of Mrs Austen and Cassandra side by side behind it.
The Curtis Museum, a Victorian building erected from 1879, stands as part of a coordinated group of community buildings at the top of Crown Hill,…
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 6 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. 6 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 Jane Austen's Chawton — the Cottage, the Great House and the Road to Alton, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
6 narration points, including St Lawrence Church, Alton, Curtis Museum, Henry Austen's bank, Jane Austen's House and Chawton House. That is about 13 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 ~2½ hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 6 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.