ST. ALBANS (Peahen; Red Lion, Room & Breakfast 7/6, pension 15/; George; Clarendon, Room & Breakfast 5/, Luncheon 1/6), an ancient city (25,588 inhabitants) on the Ver, with the most elevated cathedral in England (320 feet), has three railway stations (City, for the line to St. Pancras; Abbey, for Watford and Euston; Great Northern, for King's Cross).
St. Albans is the successor of the important Roman-British town of Verulamium, of which a few remains are still visible. It owes its name to St. Alban, a Roman soldier and the first Christian martyr in England, who was beheaded here in 303 A.D. for harbouring St. Amphibalus, the priest who had converted him. Offa, King of Mercia, founded a Benedictine abbey about 793 in honour of St. Alban, and this eventually rose to great wealth and power, so that from 1154 to 1396 its mitred abbot was the premier abbot in England. Matthew Paris (died 1259) was a monk here. During the Wars of the Roses two important battles took place at St. Albans: at the first (1455), fought near Holywell Hill, Henry VI. was defeated and captured by the Duke of York and the Earl of Warwick; at the second (1461), on Barnard's Heath, north of St. Peter's Church, Warwick was defeated by Queen Margaret and Henry VI. was released. Sarah Jennings (1660-1744), Duchess of Marlborough, was born at St. Albans, and frequently lived in Holywell House, at the foot of Holywell Hill. Cowper, the poet, spent eighteen months in St. Albans in 1764-65, partly in an institution for the mentally afflicted in College St. A house at the end of Catherine St., now re-christened Bleak House, has some claims to be the original house Dickens had in view when writing his novel.
From the Town Hall (1830), near the middle of the town, St. Peter's St. leads north to St. Peter's, a late-Perpendicular church with a tall tower. It contains some old glass; a tablet with a bust of Edward Strong (died 1723), master-mason of St. Paul's Cathedral; and the graves of many of the slain in the battles of St. Albans. The south part of St. Peter's St. is supposed to represent the racecourse of Verulamium. A little to the south of the Town Hall rises the Clock Tower (admission 2d.; view), the old town-belfry, dating from the early 15th century. The fountain in front marks the site of an 'Eleanor's Cross', destroyed in 1722. French Row, a street of old houses to the west, was occupied by the troops of Louis VIII. in 1216, and in 1356 King John of France was detained for a time in the Fleur-de-Lys Inn by the Black Prince.
