Photo: Diego Delso (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walk through Bankside, the district outside the City's jurisdiction where London's playhouses, bear-baiting rings, inns and the Bishop of Winchester's licensed stews stood side by side. From Cardinal Cap Alley and Paris Garden, where the Swan stood, past the reconstructed Globe and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse to the sites of the Hope, the Rose and the first Globe, then the Clink, the rose window of Winchester Palace and Southwark Cathedral, where Shakespeare's brother Edmund was buried in 1607, ending in the galleried yard of the George Inn. It is told plainly about what survives and what is only a site, a plaque or an excavated footprint. 16 stops, about 2.5 km on foot, from Bankside to Borough High Street.
16 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 · 165 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 55 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.
Cardinal Cap Alley, Paris Garden and the Swan site, Shakespeare's Globe, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Bear Gardens and the Hope Playhouse site, Rose Theatre, Site of the original Globe Theatre.
The Anchor, The Clink, Clink Street, Winchester Palace, Golden Hinde.
Southwark Cathedral, London Bridge, Borough Market, Cross Bones Graveyard, George Inn.
Where Francis Langley's Swan staged The Isle of Dogs in 1597, the play that had London's playhouses closed.
Where the Hope, built in 1613 and 1614 for both plays and bear-baiting, saw the first performance of Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair.
The first Bankside playhouse, built in 1587, whose remains were uncovered in 1989 and lie preserved beneath an office block.
Where Shakespeare's company built the Globe in 1599 from the timbers of the Theatre in Shoreditch, and where it burned during Henry VIII in 1613.
The church where Edmund Shakespeare, a player, was buried on 31 December 1607, with the Shakespeare memorial inside.
London's last galleried coaching inn, rebuilt in 1677, its yard and galleries the shape the playhouses grew out of.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 16 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. 16 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 Shakespeare's Bankside — Playhouses, the Clink and Southwark Cathedral, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
16 narration points, including Cardinal Cap Alley, Paris Garden and the Swan site, Shakespeare's Globe, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse and Bear Gardens and the Hope Playhouse site. That is about 32 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 ~1½ hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 16 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.