Photo: Otto Domes (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walk through St Ives, from fishing town to artists' colony. It starts above the bay at Talland House, where Virginia Woolf spent the childhood summers that lie behind To the Lighthouse, and the Malakoff, where the branch line of 1877 brought the visitors and the painters. Then the town that lived on the pilchard: St Ia's Church, the Wharf, where huers on the cliffs guided the seine boats onto the shoals, the Sloop Inn, Smeaton's Pier of 1767 to 1770 with St Leonard's Chapel at its foot, the lanes of Downalong, and St Nicholas Chapel on the Island, once a lookout for lights and smugglers. Last, the art: the Porthmeor Studios in old net lofts, Tate St Ives on the site of the gasworks, Alfred Wallis's tiled grave at Barnoon, Barbara Hepworth's studio and garden, and the Leach Pottery at the top of the Stennack, about 1.5 km from the harbour.
13 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 · 56 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 43 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.
Talland House, The Malakoff and St Ives Bay, St Ia's Church, The Wharf and the harbour.
The Sloop Inn, Smeaton's Pier and St Leonard's Chapel, Downalong and Island Square, The Island and St Nicholas Chapel.
Porthmeor Beach and the Porthmeor Studios, Tate St Ives, Barnoon Cemetery and Alfred Wallis's grave, Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Leach Pottery.
Leslie Stephen's holiday house from 1881, where Virginia Woolf spent every childhood summer looking across the bay to Godrevy Lighthouse.
Where the town lived on the pilchard: huers on the cliffs signalled the seine boats round the shoals, and the catch was salted and pressed for Italy.
John Smeaton's granite pier of 1767 to 1770, and the fishermen's chapel at its foot where crews prayed before going to sea.
A one-room granite chapel on the headland, recorded in 1538 with a light for passing ships and later used to watch for smugglers.
The grave of the fisherman who began painting in his seventies, covered in Bernard Leach's tiles of a lighthouse in huge waves.
Founded in 1920 by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada, with a wood-fired climbing kiln built partly from bricks of the Hayle dynamite works.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 13 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. 13 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 St Ives, Cornwall — the Harbour, the Huers and the Artists' Colony, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
13 narration points, including St Ia's Church, Tate St Ives, Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Leach Pottery and Talland House. That is about 23 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 ~2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 13 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.