Photo: David Dixon (CC BY-SA 2.0)
A self-guided audio walk through the city where cotton made fortunes and its workers organised. It starts at the Ancoats spinning mills of Murrays and McConnel & Kennedy, then Chetham's Library, where Marx and Engels read in 1845, the Royal Exchange of the cotton trade, and the People's History Museum. Down Deansgate to the John Rylands Library, then the Free Trade Hall on St Peter's Field, where cavalry charged a reform meeting on 16 August 1819 and where Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were ejected in 1905; the Peterloo Memorial, which names the eighteen dead; Emmeline Pankhurst's statue; the Town Hall; and the Mechanics' Institute, where the Trades Union Congress first met in 1868. Then the Alan Turing memorial, the university building where the Manchester Baby ran the first stored program in 1948, and the Pankhurst Centre on Nelson Street, where the Women's Social and Political Union was founded. About 7 km on foot.
14 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 · 402 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 133 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.
Murrays' Mills, McConnel & Kennedy mills, Chetham's Library, Royal Exchange, People's History Museum.
John Rylands Library, Free Trade Hall, Peterloo Memorial, Emmeline Pankhurst statue, Rise Up Women, Manchester Town Hall, Mechanics' Institute, Alan Turing memorial.
Manchester Baby, Pankhurst Centre.
Britain's oldest free public reference library, opened in 1653, where Marx and Engels read together in the summer of 1845.
Jeremy Deller's stepped memorial of 2019, naming the eighteen people killed when cavalry charged the reform meeting of 16 August 1819.
Built on St Peter's Field, where Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney's ejection in 1905 began the suffragettes' militant campaign.
The Princess Street building where the Trades Union Congress held its first meeting, from 2 to 6 June 1868.
The Pankhurst family home, where the Women's Social and Political Union was founded on 10 October 1903.
Where on 21 June 1948 the Baby ran a program stored in electronic memory for the first time.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 14 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. 14 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 Radical Manchester — Peterloo, the Pankhursts, Cottonopolis and the Baby, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
14 narration points, including Murrays' Mills, Chetham's Library, Royal Exchange, People's History Museum and John Rylands Library. 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 ~2½ hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 14 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.