Photo: Chris Morgan (CC BY-SA 2.0)
A self-guided audio walk through Sheffield, the city that made steel. It starts at Kelham Island, an artificial island cut from the River Don in the 1180s, and the 1848 cementation furnace on Doncaster Street, the only intact one left in Britain. Then the cathedral quarter: Paradise Square, where John Wesley preached in 1779, the cathedral, the oldest building in the city still in daily use, and Cutlers' Hall, home of the Company of Cutlers since 1638. Through the centre come the Women of Steel, the Peace Gardens with channels for the city's five rivers, the Winter Garden and the Crucible, named after Benjamin Huntsman's steel process, then the excavated site of the castle where Mary, Queen of Scots was held. The walk ends with the timber-framed Old Queen's Head, the Cutting Edge outside the station, the Streets in the Sky of Park Hill, the Leadmill, and Portland Works, where the first stainless-steel cutlery was made in 1914.
15 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 · 351 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.
Kelham Island Museum, Cementation Furnace, Paradise Square, Sheffield Cathedral, Cutlers' Hall.
Women of Steel and Barker's Pool, Peace Gardens, Winter Garden, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield Castle site.
Old Queen's Head, Sheaf Square and the Cutting Edge, Park Hill flats, The Leadmill, Portland Works.
Built in 1848 by Daniel Doncasters and Sons, the only intact cementation furnace left in Britain, turning wrought iron into blister steel until 1951.
The 1832 hall of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire, who have met on this site since 1638, opposite the cathedral on Church Street.
Martin Jennings's two bronze women, a welder and a riveter, unveiled in 2016 for the women who worked Sheffield's steelworks in both World Wars.
Where the Sheaf meets the Don: the castle that held Mary, Queen of Scots, razed after the Civil War and exposed again after Castle Market came down.
The Grade II* estate of the Streets in the Sky, with decks wide enough for a milk float, and the 2001 proposal picked out in neon.
The 1879 cutlery works where Robert Mosley's firm made the first stainless-steel cutlery from Harry Brearley's steel in 1914, bought by its community in 2013.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 15 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. 15 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 Sheffield — Steel City: Kelham Island, the Cutlers and Park Hill, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
15 narration points, including Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield Cathedral, Cutlers' Hall, Women of Steel and Barker's Pool and Peace Gardens. That is about 31 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 ~2¼ hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 15 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.