A great tour can make a guide come alive

But balancing information, detail, context and fun is a difficult skill. Here are some tips that you might find helpful.

• Practice. Good guides are made not born, and getting word perfect takes practice. Try your tour out on a friend first.
• Know the church. There is no substitute for having an in depth knowledge of the church, its architecture and history, as well as the context in which it was built and used, and other currents in religious, social, architectural and political history.
• Plan a tour which will use interesting features in the church (windows, tombs, brasses, or architectural features) to explain its history - the people who built, paid for and used the church.
• Know your audience. Some will not be familiar with terminology, religious history or the uses of a church; others will be looking for a more specialist guide to particular parts of the architecture or history. The best guide is to ask first.
  
• Remember to talk slowly, not to spend too long on any one part of the church and to tell visitors where they can get further information.
  

Most important is advertising tours and managing volunteers. We suggest having a set time once a week (perhaps on Saturday afternoons) when the church will be open and a guide present. You can advertise this on the website and in church.

Guides can help each other to prepare by practising their tours, comparing notes, deciding what the most important stops should be and how much information to give.

An audio guide can be recorded as a Podcast which visitors can download onto an MP3 player, for times when a real guide isn't available.