St Albans

I don't think I have been to St Albans (or Verulamium as I prefer to call it. Seems like they changed the name in some fit of political correctness in the early part of the last millennium) since I was in primary school. So well time for a day trip given it is only 30 minutes away out of St Pancras.

First stop was the 19th century town hall, a fine example of civic grandeur which is now nicely restored but looking for a purpose. So it is the local history museum, but it is very light on exhibits.

It has a courtroom, which is now converted to a tea room.

One of the few interesting exhibits. It is a quern stone made of puddingstone, a very rare rock local to Hertfordshire.

And upstairs is the Assembly Room, once used for grand civic functions, now available for weddings. It does look nice.

Behind the town hall is the heart of medieval St Albans.

This is the 15th century curfew tower

But the most notable feature of the medieval city is the huge cathedral.

This is the shrine to St Alban, the probably mythical Roman martyr (well almost everything is made up)

This is the longest medieval nave in England

Walking down from the cathedral to the River Ver I came across Ye Olde Fighting Cocks pub (no prizes for guessing the favourite "sport"). Supposed to be the oldest pub in England (as are several others up and down the country) I found that sadly it had succumbed to Covid and gone bust. Pity as lovely setting.

On the other side of the Ver is Verulamium Park, which pretty much contains what was the old Roman city of Verulamium. The ponds are a much more recent addition, although this always seems to have been a marshy area.

Very little remains of the ancient city, it having been robbed out extensively to build the cathedral. Basically, Christians were Philstines.

This is part of the city wall still standing.

But right in the middle of the park is a shack with a pretty extensive geometric mosaic still in situ. Apparently they have found no fewer than 49 mosiac floors in St Albans. So far.

This is the longest surviving chunk of of the Roman city walls still left. And this isn't really the walls, just the inner core of the walls. The facing stones were all pillaged centuries ago.

The park offers lots of great views back to the cathedral, taking care to try and frame photos without the cranes behind it in the background

I did say it was marshy....

I was going to have lunch in this pub - The Rose & Crown. But it had also gone into administration.

This is Verulamium Museum. I visited it, long before its turn of the millennium extension, as a young child, although my only memories of it were the skeletons on display.

So massive and thorough was the pillaging of stone from the Roman city that these are pretty much the only bits left. The rest makes up the fabric of the cathedral.

But the mosaics on display were quite spectacular, especially the shell mosaic

As is this rather fine mosaic of presumably a Roman God, but not quite sure which one. Can't really say what the protuberances from his head are supposed to be.

Massive gold coin hoard. Normally one just finds silver coins

Some remarkably fine and well preserved Roman glass - grave goods

And here are the skeletons I remember from my childhood, laid out in their limestone coffins.

Ignoring the dummies, the impressive thing here is the extensive wall plasters that have survived. Apparently they did so beacuse water seeped in between the plaster and the wattle and daub structure so they just collapsed and fell in as a whole sheet. And then laid buried flat for archaeologists to raise nearly 2000 years later

As part of the museum ticket you can also gain admission to the Roman theatre which is very nearby, just beyond this smart looking gate house

St Michael's Church

Fro m the theatre I just walked up the private road that forms the Gorhambury Walk, about 5kms of rural bliss

As you can see, it wasn't too busy

With a bit of difficulty one can just see the grand 18th century Gorhambury House through the vegetation

But one can get much closer to the romantic ruins of the old Gorhambury Manor, once grand enough to have been visited by Queen Elizabeth I no fewer than four times (at ruinous cost to the hosts)