Photo: Tk420 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walk through Shrewsbury, the town inside a loop of the Severn, between its two bridges. It starts at the castle William I ordered around 1067, and the old Shrewsbury School, now the library, where Charles Darwin boarded and his statue sits outside. Down Pride Hill, past the site of the High Cross, to St Mary's and the timber-framed Abbot's House on Butcher Row of about 1458, then through Grope Lane and the shuts to the Bear Steps and on to the Square and the Old Market Hall of 1596. Out over the Welsh Bridge to the Mount, the house where Darwin was born in 1809, and back through the Quarry and the Dingle to the round St Chad's, built after the old church fell in 1788, and the remains of Old St Chad's. The walk ends down Wyle Cop, past Henry Tudor House, over the English Bridge to Shrewsbury Abbey, founded in 1083 and the setting of the Brother Cadfael novels. About 3.5 km on foot.
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 · 101 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 37 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.
Shrewsbury Castle, Shrewsbury Library and the Darwin statue, Pride Hill and the High Cross, St Mary's Church, Butcher Row and the Abbot's House, Grope Lane, Bear Steps and the shuts, The Square and the Old Market Hall.
Welsh Bridge, The Mount, Darwin's birthplace.
The Quarry and the Dingle, St Chad's Church, Old St Chad's, Wyle Cop and Henry Tudor House, English Bridge, Shrewsbury Abbey.
The old Shrewsbury School, where Charles Darwin boarded from 1818 to 1825, with his bronze statue of 1897 in the forecourt.
The medieval passages between the markets, and Bear Steps Hall, dated by its timbers to 1358.
The Corporation's stone market hall of 1596, where Welsh wool was sold upstairs, now an arts venue and café.
The house Darwin's father built around 1800, where Charles was born on 12 February 1809; a plaque marks the room.
George Steuart's round church of 1790 to 1792, with some of the earliest cast-iron columns in a British building.
The Benedictine abbey founded in 1083, which received St Winefride's relics in 1138, the world of the Brother Cadfael novels.
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 Shrewsbury — Darwin's Town, the Abbey, the Shuts and the Two Bridges, 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 Shrewsbury Castle, Shrewsbury Library and the Darwin statue, Pride Hill and the High Cross, St Mary's Church and Butcher Row and the Abbot's House. That is about 30 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. 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.