Photo: Tilman2007 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walk through Ludlow, the market town that grew at the gates of a frontier castle. It starts in Castle Square, open to the castle since a Victorian town hall came down in 1986, and goes into Ludlow Castle: the de Lacys' stronghold on the Welsh border, Roger Mortimer's palace, and from 1472 the seat of the Council of the Marches, where the boy Edward V heard he was king in 1483 and Prince Arthur died in 1502. Down Dinham, past the chapel of St Thomas, to the bridge below the castle walls, then to Mill Street and the Palmers' Guildhall and to Ludford Bridge, named in the Yorkist rout of 1459. The walk climbs back through the Broad Gate and up Broad Street to the Buttercross, St Laurence's Church, with its misericords and A. E. Housman's memorial, and the Feathers of 1619 on the Bull Ring. About 2.5 km on foot, with a steep climb.
11 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 · 44 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 11 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.
Castle Square and the market, Ludlow Castle, Dinham and St Thomas's Chapel, Dinham Bridge.
Mill Street and the Guildhall, Ludford Bridge, Broad Gate, Broad Street.
Buttercross, St Laurence's Church, The Feathers and the Bull Ring.
The de Lacys' border castle and later the seat of the Council of the Marches, where Prince Arthur died in April 1502.
The fifteenth-century bridge that gave its name to the Rout of Ludford Bridge in 1459, when York's army broke up and Ludlow was sacked.
The thirteenth-century town gate, later a Georgian house; look up inside the arch for the portcullis groove.
William Baker's market building of the 1740s, still a market on its ground floor, with the Ludlow Museum upstairs.
The great parish church with its carved misericords, the presumed resting place of Prince Arthur's heart and A. E. Housman's memorial.
Rees Jones's timber-framed house of 1619, an inn since 1670, with its three-feather carving and electioneering balcony.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 11 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. 11 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 Ludlow — the Castle of the Marches, St Laurence's and the Planned Town, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
11 narration points, including Castle Square and the market, Ludlow Castle, Ludford Bridge, Broad Gate and Buttercross. That is about 22 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. 11 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.