Photo: Jim Osley (CC BY-SA 2.0)
A self-guided audio tour of Eltham Palace, a medieval royal house with a 1930s house built onto it, and of the town around it. It crosses Richard II's stone bridge over the moat into the Courtaulds' circular entrance hall, then Edward IV's Great Hall of the 1470s, where a feast for about 2,000 people was held at Christmas 1482, and the rooms Stephen and Virginia Courtauld made in 1933 to 1936, including the centrally heated quarters of Mah-Jongg, their ring-tailed lemur. Then the 1930s gardens and the moat. Outside the palace, Court Yard tells the story of the royal centuries, from Edward II to the young Henry VIII meeting Erasmus here in 1499; Eltham Lodge of 1664 and the parish church follow. The walk ends at Well Hall Pleasaunce and its Tudor Barn, Bob Hope's birthplace on Craigton Road, and the memorial stone on Well Hall Road where Stephen Lawrence fell in 1993.
12 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 · 34 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 moat bridge, The entrance hall, The Great Hall, The Courtaulds' rooms and Mah-Jongg, The gardens: the rock garden, the rose garden and the sunken garden, The moat and the south bridge.
Court Yard, Eltham Lodge and the Royal Blackheath Golf Club, St John the Baptist church.
Well Hall Pleasaunce and the Tudor Barn, Bob Hope's birthplace, Craigton Road, The Stephen Lawrence memorial.
The Courtaulds' circular hall under a concrete-and-glass dome, lined with blackbean veneer and marquetry of a Viking and a Roman soldier.
Edward IV's hall of the 1470s, 30.8 metres long under an oak false-hammer-beam roof, used as a farm barn by the eighteenth century.
Virginia Courtauld's onyx and gold-mosaic bathroom, and the bamboo-lined, centrally heated room of their pet lemur.
Where the palace's outer court stood: two centuries of royal Christmases, Parliaments and the young Henry VIII meeting Erasmus in 1499.
The surviving barn of Well Hall Farm, beside the moat of the house where Edith Nesbit lived from 1899 to 1922.
The stone on Well Hall Road where Stephen Lawrence, eighteen, fell after a racist attack on 22 April 1993.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 12 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. 12 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 Eltham Palace — the Medieval Royal Palace and the Courtaulds' Art Deco House, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
12 narration points, including The entrance hall, The Great Hall, The Courtaulds' rooms and Mah-Jongg, The gardens: the rock garden, the rose garden and the sunken garden and The moat and the south bridge. 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 ~2½ hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 12 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.