Terms
Gorse is an independent app, not affiliated with English Heritage or anyone else. No accounts, no subscription, no servers holding your data. The catalogue is factual information, descriptions we wrote ourselves and openly licensed imagery, all bundled with the app. Site details can go out of date, so always check the official page before you set off. Your flags and journal are yours, stored privately on your device and, if you use it, your own iCloud. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales.
Always check the official page before you travel.
Gorse is independent and unofficial
Gorse is an independent companion app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or authorised by English Heritage, Historic England, the National Trust or any other heritage organisation. Those names appear in the app only as factual descriptors: "English Heritage site" means the site is in English Heritage's care, in the same way a guidebook would say so. It is a statement of fact, not a claim of any relationship. Every site detail screen links prominently to the official organisation page.
The licence to use Gorse
Subject to these terms, you may install and use Gorse on any iPhone you own or control, for your own personal, non-commercial purposes.
You may not copy, modify, reverse-engineer, sell or redistribute the app or any of its components. All intellectual property in the app - the Gorse name, wordmark, design system, code and original content - remains the property of the developer.
Gorse is made available through the Apple App Store and Apple's TestFlight service. Apple's own App Store terms of service also apply to your use of Gorse.
Content in the app
The catalogue of historic places ships inside the app and is assembled from several sources.
- Factual information - site names, locations, categories, opening hours, prices, facilities - is collected from publicly available sources. Facts are not subject to copyright in the way creative works are, though we take care to verify and attribute them.
- Descriptions are written by us from primary facts and public-domain scholarship. They are not reproduced from any heritage organisation's copy.
- Images are either our own photographs or images from openly licensed repositories, principally Wikimedia Commons and Geograph, used under Creative Commons licences (CC0, CC BY 2.0, CC BY-SA 2.0, CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0, as indicated per image). Attribution is a legal requirement of most of those licences, so photographer names and source URLs appear in the app under About, then Image credits, generated from the catalogue. We do not use photographer names for anything else.
Despite our best efforts, information can go out of date. Opening times, prices and access arrangements change. Always check the official page before making a journey, especially for staffed attractions. Gorse is not liable for losses arising from reliance on information in the app.
Your content
Your flags, journal entries and photos are entirely private. They are stored on your device and, if iCloud is enabled, in your own private iCloud storage. We cannot see them. You own them completely. Deleting the app, or clearing Gorse from your iCloud storage, removes them.
Accuracy and availability
We keep the catalogue as accurate as we can, and it is refreshed with each update to the app. Even so, we make no warranty, express or implied, that the information is complete, accurate or current. Gorse is provided as it is. As a personal project it may be updated, changed or withdrawn at any time; we will try to give reasonable notice of significant changes on gorse.app.
Reporting errors
If you notice something wrong, please use the "Report an issue" button on the site detail screen.
Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, the developer of Gorse is not liable for any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential loss arising from your use of the app or reliance on its content. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any liability that cannot lawfully be limited.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. Any dispute is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.
Changes to these terms
We may update these terms from time to time. Material changes will be posted on this page with an updated effective date. Continuing to use Gorse after that constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.