Colchester Audio Tour: Unsung Hands

Explore Colchester at your own pace

Colchester has been Britain's oldest recorded town since a Roman centurion named Favonius Facilis had his tombstone raised here in AD 50. This tour is not about the Romans, Normans, or earls who commissioned the monuments. It is about the legionaries who mixed the mortar, the Flemish weavers who fled Alva's army and rebuilt a cloth trade in Maidenburgh Street, the monk who told Henry VIII to his face that he would not give up his abbey, the ordinary townspeople who ate cats and dogs through eleven weeks of Civil War siege, the maidservant Mary Last who kept nine Victorians fed and dressed, and the builder's men from Hythe Hill who laid 1.2 million bricks for a water tower their rector called an elephant.

Photo: Martin Roscoe, Unsplash

Tour details

• Duration: 1 hour 10 minutes, entirely at your own pace
• Distance: around 3.0 km (1.8 miles)
• Stops: 11 landmarks, including St John's Abbey Gate, St John's Green, Colchester, St Botolph's Priory, Priory Street, Colchester, Colchester High Street, near Sir Isaac Walk
• Audio: up to 28 minutes of narration
• Starts at: St John's Abbey Gate, St John's Green, Colchester

Map data by Mapbox and OpenStreetMap contributors

How it works

• Book here and a redemption code arrives by email within minutes.
• Download the free AudaTours app on your phone and enter the code.
• Download the tour once and the whole thing works offline.
• Walk to the first stop and press play. The audio for each landmark starts automatically as you approach it, so your phone can stay in your pocket.

There is no fixed date and no start time. The date you pick at checkout does not matter, and the tour stays on your phone permanently, so you can use it whenever you next visit and walk it again as often as you like.

What is included

• Professionally narrated audio that plays automatically at each stop
• An interactive map showing the walking route between landmarks
• Full offline access once downloaded, so you need no data or signal
• Freedom to start, pause and resume whenever you like
• Lifetime access - your code never expires

Where you will stop

• St John's Abbey Gate, St John's Green, Colchester
• St Botolph's Priory, Priory Street, Colchester
• Colchester High Street, near Sir Isaac Walk
• Balkerne Gate, Colchester
• Jumbo Water Tower, Balkerne Hill, Colchester
• Roman Wall, Priory Street, Colchester
• West Stockwell Street, Dutch Quarter, Colchester
• St Helen's Lane, Colchester
• Maidenburgh Street, Colchester
• Colchester Castle
• Hollytrees Museum, Castle Park, Colchester

Image: AudaTours

What is AudaTours?

AudaTours turns a walk through a city into a story. Our guides bring landmarks to life with the history, the scandals and the detail you would never get from a plaque.

• Immersive: real stories about the places in front of you, not a dry commentary
• Offline: download once and use it with no data, anywhere
• At your own pace: start, pause and resume whenever you want
• Accurate: every story is built from verified historical sources and checked before release

Good to know

• This is a self-guided audio tour on your own phone. There is no in-person guide.
• It does not include entry to any building or site along the route.
• The landmarks on the tour are not affiliated with AudaTours.
• You need a smartphone with Android 7.0 or later, or iOS 16 or later.
• Bring headphones and start with a charged phone.

Who it suits

Solo travellers, couples, families and small groups who would rather explore on their own schedule than follow a guide and a fixed departure time. It suits a first visit, and it suits anyone who has already seen the famous sights and wants to know what actually happened in them.

Image credits

Photos: Martin Roscoe, Siân Wynn-Jones (Unsplash); AudaTours.