{"id":186468,"date":"2021-07-27T10:30:13","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T09:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/travel\/?p=186468"},"modified":"2021-07-27T12:17:43","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T11:17:43","slug":"st-albans-the-five-minute-spare-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/travel\/st-albans-the-five-minute-spare-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"St Albans The Five Minute Spare Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

St Albans. The ideal staycation base for those with a love of history or Hot Cross Buns.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Buns we hear you ask, well read on and we will get to that bit. But seriously if you are in Hertfordshire or London for that matter then you really need to consider paying a visit to this former Celtic capital. Its history is long and illustrious history and over the years it has grown to become a sizable city and gain a cathedral. Being around 20 miles from London it has also become a popular commuter town, however that has not soiled its charm too much that also means that anyone using the city as a base has numerous attractions to choose from both locally and in the vicinity.<\/p>\n

The city also has a football team for those who follow the lower league game and there are all the modern amenities one would expect from a location of its stature.\u00a0 Ok, preamble aside let’s get on with the guide, starting with a quick history lesson…<\/p>\n

Early St Albans<\/h2>\n

There have been people living in St Albans since the Iron Age. There was a settlement nearby, which would have rested at the current settlement of Prae Hill. When the Romans invaded in 43AD, they took over the town and caused significant damage. Up until that point, the city was named Verulamium. This is taken from the Celtic words for \u201cthe settlement on top of the marsh\u201d.<\/p>\n

It was during these early centuries that Saint Alban himself was said to have lived here. between the 3rd and 4th centuries, Saint Alban sheltered a Christian priest at his home within the city. When the Romans came hunting the priest, Saint Alban donned the priestly robes himself and was taken for execution. Christian mythology has it that a spring sprang up where his head was chopped off. He became one of the earliest British Saints. Saint Alban was executed in 304AD.<\/p>\n

The Romans Take Over<\/h3>\n

The town of Verulamium, as the Romans called it, grew in importance in the eyes of the Roman Empire. There has been evidence uncovered of trade and of settlements that existed 50 years before Julius Caesar invaded Britain. Excavations performed in 1996 found silver coins from the Roman Republic era, which would have been around 90 BC. Before the Romans arrived, St. Albans would have been nothing more than a town full of wooden huts with thatched roofs. There may have been a ditch and an earth rampart, which would have given the townsfolk some protection from any invaders. Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to keep the Romans out.<\/p>\n

Boudicca burned St Albans in 61AD when she went on a rebellion throughout the country. The town was quickly rebuilt but wooden buildings were replaced with stone ones. There have been temples to the Roman gods uncovered in St. Albans. There was a theatre which seated nearly 6000 people. In the 3rd century, those earthen ramparts were replaced with strong stone walls. Under the Roman Empire, St. Albans prospered.<\/p>\n

And then they were gone<\/h3>\n

The last of the Roman soldiers evacuated British shores around about the beginning of the 5th century. By 407AD they were mostly gone. Some few would have stayed behind, having started families in the area. Their bloodlines would add to the already diverse mix of people that would eventually form the English nation. However, St. Albans itself would have been largely abandoned.<\/p>\n

Saxons came next invading from Germany, they would have arrived before the 7th century. An Abbey grew up in the area in the late 8th century. The village that grew up around the Abbey became known as St. Albans. By the time the village had grown up, the population was strictly Anglo-Saxon. The Germans that invaded a century before then had converted to Christianity. In 1978 an excavation by archaeologists expecting to find Roman ruins instead found a mediaeval chapter house which was dated to the 8th century. It is possible that two separate towns existed for a period in the 8th century.<\/p>\n

St Albans during mediaeval times<\/h2>\n

The mediaeval town grew up around the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Albans, which was founded in 793. It was the principal Mediaeval Abbey in England. The Magna Carta was first drafted inside this Abbey. It became a parish church in 1539 when Henry the eighth decided to go on a war against the church. In 1877 it was finally turned into a cathedral and given the status that it truly deserved.<\/p>\n

For centuries St. Albans was overshadowed by the nearby town of Kingsbury. Sometime in the 10th century, one of the Abbots from the Saint Albans Abbey decided to enlarge the town. He brought in new settlers and bought them new building materials. He also began running a weekly market. Not so nice, that same Abbott bought the large fish pool from Kingsbury, which was where most of them made their money. He drained the pool, thereby taking away the main source of revenue from the area. This forced residents of Kingsbury to move on to St. Albans where there was food and work. The Abbot got his wish of a larger town, but at what cost?<\/p>\n

This was nothing compared to his successor, which bought the entire turn of Kingsbury in the 11th century. He bought it specifically to level it flat. Any remaining residents moved to Saint Albans. He even had the roads diverted so that more people would pass through the town.<\/p>\n

The Doomsday Book<\/h3>\n

At the time of the Domesday Survey<\/a> conducted in 1086, St. Albans was one of the largest 20% of settlements recorded. By this point, it only had one owner and that was the Abbey of Saint Albans. All the land around the town belonged to the Abbot. He owned 16 ploughlands, with two Lords plough teams and one Lords Plough team extra. There were 13 men’s plough teams to plough those fields. The Abbot owned two ploughs, woodland containing 1000 pigs, 3 mills and 1 fishery. In 1086 the land was worth \u00a320, which was a princely sum in those days.<\/p>\n

It is estimated that the 14th century in Albans had a population of 1300 people. By 1077, the new Abbot demolished the old Abbey and rebuilt it. It is thought that the rebuild was further downhill than the old one. The town would have been a haven for carpenters and blacksmiths, leatherworkers and bakers. Cattle and swine would have been traded from the surrounding local countryside. The primary fabric used would have been wool, which would have been dyed here.<\/p>\n

Mediaeval St. Albans had problems of its own though. Nobody liked that the Abbot owned the town. Frequent arguments are reported between the Abbot and the townspeople throughout the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the town grew in importance until it held one weekly market and three annual fairs.<\/p>\n

What Time Is It<\/h3>\n

In the year 1403, Thomas Wolvey was hired to create a clock tower for the marketplace. The original bell weighed a full tonne. It sounded at 8:00 or 9:00 PM every night for the curfew imposed by the Abbey. Around the same time the pub, Ye Olde Fighting Cocks was opened. It claims to be the oldest pub in all of England. The Bishops of Hertford and of St Albans would have had their palaces on Abbey Mill Lane.<\/p>\n

2 battles took place within the walls of Saint Albans during the War of the Roses. The Yorkists and the Lancastrians fought two battles here, one in 1455 and one in 1461.<\/p>\n

Let’s take a historical break for a moment and turn our attention to some fun facts about Saint Alban’s.<\/p>\n

Fun facts and trivia about St Albans.<\/h2>\n

We have reached that time of the article again. At this point, we like to recap some of the funniest things to have happened in and around the towns we are reviewing. Let’s take a look at what gossip we could dish up about Saint Albans.<\/p>\n

Some fun facts about Saint Albans include:<\/p>\n