Download the ‘what was here?’ app (free):
take our survey
Cast your mind back to the year before COVID-19 (feels like a long time ago doesn’t it) and you may remember we launched a virtual ‘time machine’. It was called the ‘What Was Here’ app, free to download on smartphones, and since then its cemented its place as a heritage tourism experience for the region with two Finalist nominations in the Remarkable East Yorkshire Tourism awards ‘REYTA’s. Now we’ve done a few tweaks to our time machine, given it a spring clean, refreshed the design, and it’s ready to take people into the past as we look forward in hope to a future out of the pandemic.
Everyone loves a good heritage trail, and there are now over 21 of these across the Hull and East Yorkshire region, packed onto one app. As well as a new face, the app comes with new mini quizzes and audio commentary features on some of these trails, which adds extra fun to your tour through time.
‘What Was Here?’ has always been a window on the past, where you can look through time at an old scene from the location where it was photographed, but until now it’s only been possible to use the ‘Camera View’ to phase between past & present in the Trails section. Now, we’ve opened up several of these ‘time portals’ across the East Riding for you to discover using the ‘Map’ function. You can guide yourself around the region and see how many you can find.
We’re also asking for your help and encourage you to leave a review in the app stores once you’ve downloaded and checked it out. And, if you take part in our simple survey by 21st August, you’ll be entered into our free prize draw to win an Amazon Echo Dot!
One other thing you’ll notice on our app homepage is that lots of amazing organisations and projects have partnered with us on ‘What Was Here?’ to add their own heritage trails to the time travelling experience, including Visit Hull, Visit East Yorkshire, Burton Constable Hall, The Humber Bridge Board, East Riding Festival of Words, Hessle Mill Quarry To Country Park project, Bridlington Townscape Heritage, Sewerby Hall & Gardens, North Yorkshire County Council, with more and more coming onboard the time travelling journey.
Happy (time) travels!
Download the ‘what was here?’ app (free):
take our survey
by Sam Bartle
Digital Archivist
Twitter: @bartle_sam
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