Photo: http://www.wyrdlight.com Author: Antony McCallum (CC BY 3.0)
A self-guided audio tour of Winchester, the town Alfred refounded as a fortified burh after the Viking wars. It starts at the gateway of Hyde Abbey, where Alfred was reburied and his grave was lost, then the Westgate with its early gunports and debtors' graffiti, and the Great Hall, where Sir Walter Raleigh was tried in 1603 and the Round Table, made for Edward I and repainted for Henry VIII, hangs on the wall. Past the Buttercross and the City Museum to the brick outline of the Old Minster, then the Norman cathedral that a diver, William Walker, saved from sinking: Jane Austen's grave, the mortuary chests that very probably hold Queen Emma, and the twelfth-century Winchester Bible. Then Kingsgate, the house in College Street where Austen died in 1817, Winchester College, the ruins of Wolvesey, the Weirs and the City Mill on the Itchen, and Hamo Thornycroft's bronze of Alfred.
18 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 · 159 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 48 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.
Hyde Abbey Gateway, The Westgate, The Great Hall and the Round Table, Buttercross, Winchester City Museum, The Old Minster site.
Winchester Cathedral, Jane Austen's grave, The Mortuary Chests, The Winchester Bible, Jane Austen statue, Kingsgate and St Swithun-upon-Kingsgate.
8 College Street, Winchester College, Wolvesey Castle, The Weirs, City Mill, King Alfred's statue.
All that still stands of the abbey where Alfred, his queen and Edward the Elder were reburied in 1110.
Henry III's hall of 1222 to 1235, with a thirteenth-century Round Table painted for Henry VIII with Arthur wearing the young king's face.
The Norman cathedral begun in 1079, underpinned from 1906 to 1911 by a diver working under its walls.
Her ledger stone in the north aisle praises her heart, temper and mind, and does not mention that she wrote anything.
Six painted chests high on the presbytery screens, holding the bones of at least twenty-three people, very probably including Queen Emma.
The lodging house where Jane Austen spent her last weeks and died on 18 July 1817.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 18 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. 18 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 Winchester — Alfred the Great, the Cathedral and England's Old Capital, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
18 narration points, including Hyde Abbey Gateway, The Westgate, The Great Hall and the Round Table, Buttercross and Winchester City Museum. That is about 34 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 ~3 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 18 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.