A few yards to the west of the cathedral is the Abbey Gatehouse (1380), the only relic (besides the church) of the monastic buildings, long used as a gaol and now occupied by the Grammar School founded by Edward VI. Thence a path descends to the Ver, beyond which lies the site of the Roman city of VERULAMIUM.
Verulamium was founded soon after the Roman conquest of 43 A.D., perhaps on the site of an earlier native town. Skirting fragments of the Roman walls (which enclosed an oval area of circa 200 acres) remain, best near St. Germain's Chapel. A theatre, the only Roman theatre discovered in England, was excavated in 1847 and part of a town hall and the forum (near St. Michael's Church) in 1898-1908. There is a small collection of Roman antiquities in the Town Museum.
The little Fighting Cocks Inn, by the bridge, once of the oldest inhabited houses in England, was perhaps originally a boat-house or gate of Offa's Saxon monastery.
From the bridge a pleasant path diverging to the left from the British causeway running south, leads along the Ver to (circa + mile west of the cathedral) St. Michael's Church (admission 3d.; key at No 37 St Michael St.), the burial-place of Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam and Viscount St. A bans (1561-1626), with a statue representing the lord chancellor in a characteristic attitude ('sic sedebat'; 'thus he used to sit'). The church, founded circa 950, retains some traces of Saxon work and contains a few brasses and a beautiful Jacobean pulpit; in the vestry is an interesting Resurrection. Beyond the church the road goes on (passing the Roman theatre; on the left) to (1+ miles) Gorhambury (Earl of Verulam), in a fine park (admission on application). A little west of the modern mansion are the ruins of the Elizabethan house in which the great chancellor died.
From Holywell Hill, which descends from near the Clock Tower towards St. Stephen's church, Albert St. leads to the left, and turning again th the left we cross the Ver to the site of Sopwell Nunnery, of which Dame Juliana Berners, author of the 'Boke of St. Albans' (printed in 1486), was prioress. The existing ruins, however, are those of a mansion built on the spot at the Dissolution. St. Stephen's Church (12-15th century) contains a lectern supposed to have been brought from Holyrood in Edinburgh in the time of Henry VIII. by Bishop Crichtoun of Dunkeld.
From St. Albans to Watford; to Hatfield; omnibuses run from St. Albans to Hatfield and Hertford, and to all the neighbouring towns.
