Curious walkers can find out about King’s Cross’ history thanks to a new mobile phone application.

‘King’s Cross, London –Streetstories’ detects a user’s location and plays them a relevant audio story.

Francesca Panetta, who helped create the app, said: “We found out all kinds of things about the area during this project – Charles Dickens lived here for some of his childhood, Thomas Hardy worked here as a trainee architect and, along York Way, you would have seen cattle being marched down the road from the Caledonian cattle market, once the largest in Europe.”

More recent history is also covered, including the clubbing scene and its seedier elements.

The app was produced by the Guardian Newspaper and apps comany Calvium.