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Legend of Alderley Edge put into the hands of visitors with new augmented reality app

An augmented reality (AR) app, which brings the Legend of Alderley Edge to life for visitors, has been launched, focusing on people's connections to the legend.

29 September 2025•4 min read
Woodland at Alderly Edge.

An augmented reality (AR) app, which brings the Legend of Alderley Edge to life for visitors, has been launched, focusing on visitor and local community connections to the legend.

Following the success of a pilot version funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which ran between 2022 and 2023, the Invisible Worlds app has been officially launched.

Alderley Edge in Cheshire, cared for by the National Trust, is home to a local legend concerning an ancient army sleeping beneath the hill, guarded by a mysterious wizard.

The app has been designed to bring the Legend of Alderley to life, and to encourage both local communities and visitors, to share new and existing legends of this remarkable site and its landscape.

Invisible Worlds is a unique blend of local storytelling, placemaking and interactivity, giving an immersive platform for people to digitally engage with otherwise intangible histories.

Professor Victoria Flood, University of Birmingham

Invisible Worlds is accessible via smartphone or tablet, and shares and collects new versions of the legend, presented alongside curated soundscapes, visions of wizards and white horses, and glimpses into the hidden network of mines beneath the site.

The app is part of a research project led by the University of Birmingham, the University of Lincoln, and the Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London, in collaboration with the National Trust.

Commenting on the app launch, Victoria Flood, the Principal Investigator on the project and Professor of Medieval & Early Modern Literature at the University of Birmingham, said: “The app has been designed to offer visitors to Alderley Edge a new way to experience its rich, legendary history, which has shaped human relationships to the site for at least three centuries, and is rooted in regional narratives which are even older still.

“Invisible Worlds is a unique blend of local storytelling, placemaking and interactivity, giving an immersive platform for people to digitally engage with otherwise intangible histories.”

Three shots of the Invisible Worlds app.

The Invisible Worlds app offers different ways for visitors to engage with the legend of Alderly Edge.

We hope Invisible Worlds will give people the chance to see the Edge in a new way and add some extra magic to their visits.

Kate Picker, Experience and Visitor Programming Manager, National Trust

Alongside its legendary content, the app shares information on the environmental history of Alderley Edge and has been designed to help raise awareness of the ecological importance of safeguarding non-built heritage sites.

Speaking about the new iteration of the app, Professor Flood added: “We are looking forward to exploring the ways in which the app might be used to encourage visitors to help to protect and conserve this truly magical landscape”.

Kate Picker, Experience and Visitor Programming Manager at National Trust, said: "We hope Invisible Worlds will give people the chance to see the Edge in a new way and add some extra magic to their visits. It’s an exciting way to explore the stories of the site.”

Invisible Worlds is available to download on iOS and Android now.

Notes for editors

For media inquiries please contact Ellie Hail, Communications Officer, University of Birmingham on +44 (0)7966 311 409. Out-of-hours, please call +44 (0) 121 414 2772.

Image credit: Invisible Worlds and the National Trust.

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About the Invisible Worlds project

  • Invisible Worlds is a collaboration between an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Birmingham, the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London, and the University of Lincoln, alongside cultural partners, and creative practitioners working with visual media, soundscapes, and storytelling: John Dipper, Elizabeth Garner, Nick Hennessey, Lunatraktors, Nayan Kulkarni, and Owl Project.
  • The project was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Early Career Standard Grant between 2020 and 2023, and an Arts and Humanities Impact Acceleration Account Award between 2024 and 2025 awarded by the University of Birmingham.
  • Invisible Worlds has been developed as a case study, with extensible potential across heritage sites and organisations. It engages with the capacity of Augmented Reality for the representation and analysis of imagined worlds, overlaid upon the geographical real, as a vital component in communicating new dynamic histories of non-built heritage, or sites with invisible, legendary or difficult histories.

About the National Trust  

  • The National Trust is an independent conservation charity founded in 1895 by three people: Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley, who saw the importance of the nation's heritage and open spaces and wanted to preserve them for everyone to enjoy. Today, across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, we continue to look after places so people and nature can thrive.
  • We care for more than 250,000 hectares of countryside, 780 miles of coastline, 1 million collection items and 500 historic properties, gardens and nature reserves. In 2023/24 we received 25.3 million visitors to our pay for entry sites. The National Trust is for everyone - we were founded for the benefit of the whole nation, and our 5.38 million members, funders and donors, and tens of thousands of volunteers support our work to care for nature, beauty, history for everyone, for ever.
  • Alderley Edge and Cheshire Countryside | National Trust
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  • Professor Victoria Flood

    Professor in Medieval and Early Modern Literature

    Biographical and contact information for Victoria Flood, Professor in Medieval and Early Modern Literature in the Department of English Literature at the University of Birmingham.

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