By Amelia Cosgrove
There's something wonderful about arriving in a city and letting someone who truly loves it show you around.
That's exactly what the Lincoln Free Walking Tour offers - a slow, story-filled wander through a city that turns out to have far more history tucked into its cobbled streets than you'd ever expect, and that’s coming from a local.
Expect some awe-struck tales and enough gory history to make a Tudor soap opera blush.
The Lincoln Free Walking Tour is the best (and cheapest) way to get the full story, and I don't say ‘cheapest’ lightly - it's free, unless you feel like tipping, which you will.
I joined the Saturday morning tour, which runs for a hearty three hours, yet only explores a slice of Lincoln's history.
Our History Host
The guide of the day was Brant, one of the tour's founders, and he was an absolute weapon - in the very best sense. Warm, sharp, and armed with an inexhaustible supply of stories, he swung effortlessly between ‘here's a grand architectural marvel’ and ‘here's someone getting horribly murdered here in 1173’, often in the same breath.
Brant started the tour back in 2021 with his university mate Matt - both architects by day, tour guides by passion. It's grown from two friends showing off their favourite city into a whole rotating cast of guides who now share tour duties throughout the week. Somewhere along the line ‘let's tell people about Lincoln for fun’ became an institution.
Who This Tour Is For
Our little band of explorers included a couple visiting from the Czech Republic and two best friends who apparently spend their weekends doing walking tours all over the UK - professional tourists in their own country, essentially, which is a hobby I fully respect.
No-one had set foot in Lincoln before (except me of course), so we all got to gawp at things together like a small, delighted flock of pigeons - (fun fact: actual pigeons tend to keep their distance, thanks to the resident peregrine falcons that guard the cathedral).
But aside from my experience, this tour is perfect for first-time visitors, curious locals, and families wanting to make history feel a little less like homework.
Three Hours, Almost 2000 Years
We started at the Cathedral, cut through Bailgate, descended Steep Hill, and finished up by the water at Brayford Pool. Along the way we time-travelled from Roman fortress to medieval strongholds. With three hours' worth of history packed into one morning, it's impossible to name all my highlights, but some of the more niche gems deserve a mention:
First: a tennis ball that has been stubbornly lodged high within one of Lincoln Cathedral's arches since 1914, after a local boy accidentally launched it there. More than a century later, it's still refusing to come down, and Brant used it as the perfect springboard into some wonderfully eccentric Cathedral trivia.
Second: the landlord of the Strugglers Inn was said to offer condemned prisoners one last drink before they were led to their execution the following morning - making the phrase ‘last orders’ feel rather more literal.
Third: Brant's own favourite bit of the tour, he told us, is the tale of Nicola de la Haye - Lincoln Castle's female constable, who defended it through not one but two sieges roughly a quarter of a century apart, the second time in her sixties. She later became England's first female sheriff, which feels like a wildly undersold historical flex for someone most people have never heard of. Genuinely one of the best ‘why isn't this a movie yet?’ stories in the whole tour.
And seeing as we're proudly promoting Lincoln as a dog-friendly city, I’d be doing Snips a disservice if I didn’t mention him. Brant told the story with such affection, letting us in on the fact that Snips' collar is still preserved in the Guildhall. I’d be doing the tale a disservice if I didn’t mention it here - partly because it’s such a wonderfully quirky piece of Lincoln history, but mostly because Brant’s passion for keeping Snips’ story alive was impossible to miss. He and Matt are even doing their best to get a statue of Snips recognised by the council, so fingers crossed Lincoln’s favourite four-legged market trader gets the tribute he deserves.
The Practical Bits
Cost: Free – or pay what you think it's worth, tips taken (cash or card) at the end.
Length: 3 hours on Saturdays; 2–2.5 hours the rest of the week.
Schedule: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday mornings, departing 10am from Castle Square.
Booking: Spaces are limited, so book online rather than turning up and hoping for the best.
Other Tours: If one tour isn't enough Lincoln for you (understandable), the same crew also run a Roman Lincoln tour, a Medieval Lincoln tour, an Industry & Innovation tour, and a South Common tour, all free, all on Sunday mornings. There's also a paid Historic Pubs Walking Tour (£32) - roughly four boozy hours around Lincoln's pubs and local ales, over-18s only, for when you've earned a pint after all that walking.
Amelia is pictured (back centre) with guide Brant (front) and other walkers