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St Albans

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For other places named similarly, see St. Albans (disambiguation).

Template:Infobox England place St Albans (thus spelt, no apostrophe or dot) is the main urban area of the City and District of St Albans in southern Hertfordshire, England, around 22 miles (35.5km) north of central London. It was the first major town on the old Roman road Watling Street for travellers heading north and was previously the Roman city of Verulamium. After the Roman withdrawal, and prior to becoming known as St Albans, the town was called Verlamchester or Wæclingacaester.


The locality

Housing is expensive relative to England in general, mainly due to fast commuting to London, especially the City, by train. The local road transport network is another factor: St Albans is at the meeting point of the A5183 (the old A5 or Watling Street) and the A1081 (the old A6); the M25 runs east-west just south of the city; and both the M1, only a few miles to the west, and the A1(M), five miles to the east, can provide fast connections to London and the north.

Apart from its historic core, St Albans is highly suburban in character, with much of its housing stock built in the inter-war years and during post-war expansion. Now entirely surrounded by the Metropolitan Green Belt, it is seeing significant 'infill' development and pressure to relax the Green Belt restrictions.

The council estimates that 20% of the working population travel to London to work, while local business provides 46,000 jobs of which around 46% are filled by inward commuters. The local economy is made up mainly of offices, small enterprises, retailing and tourism-based enterprises, 80% of which employ fewer than 10 staff. In the working population, 33% are employed in professional and managerial occupations. Self-employment in Hertfordshire runs at 15% of the workforce, compared with a UK average of 12%.

File:Arms-st-albans.jpg
Arms of St Albans City and District Council

There are two train stations in St Albans. The City Station is about 750 metres east of the city centre and is served by the Thameslink railway line, with trains (operated since April 2006 by First Capital Connect) to Bedford, Luton, London Luton Airport, London, Sutton, Wimbledon, London Gatwick Airport, and Brighton. The Abbey Station is about one kilometre south of the city centre and is served by the "Abbey Flyer", operated by Silverlink. A single train runs between St Albans and Watford Junction, starting a new round trip every 45 minutes during most of the day. This line is a historical accident, the result of the Earl of Verulam refusing to sell land to the railway company then driving North from Watford.

There is easy access to London Luton Airport by both rail and road. London Heathrow Airport is around a 30 minute road journey.

GCSE results for District schools show 63% of pupils achieving 5 A* - C grades, against a national average of around 46%.

The centre of the city suffers significant road traffic congestion because of the city's many small surrounding streets, high car use, poor take-up and provision of local public transport, and insufficient measures to persuade motorists to drive around rather than through the centre. The council estimates that 75% of traffic entering the city is through-traffic. From 2004 the problem was heavily exacerbated by a series of road works, prompting severe criticism of Hertfordshire County Council's Hertfordshire Highways agency. In 2006 the Agency received further criticism for a multi-million pound overspend and late delivery of works to the St Peter's Street area.

A street market is held in Market Place and St Peter's Street on Wednesdays and Saturdays, as it has been for many hundreds of years. There is also a monthly farmers' market, normally on the second Sunday.

St Albans is one of several places that, by repute, has the most pubs per square mile in the country (Edinburgh, Norwich, Nottingham, Otley and Rochdale are other claimants). It also claims to have the oldest pub in England, named Ye Olde Fighting Cocks (Nottingham again providing a counter-claimant in Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem).

The main free local weekly newspapers are The Herts Advertiser, and the St Albans and Harpenden Review. The sister title of the Review is the paid-for St Albans Observer, which also has an edition for Harpenden. The Herts Advertiser celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2005.

History

Main article: History of St Albans
Clock tower
File:Catedrala proba.jpg
The cathedral
Ye Olde Fighting Cocks
The Old Town Hall and Market Place, viewed from St Peter's Street

The St Albans area has a long history of settlement. The Celtic Catuvellauni tribe had a settlement at Prae Hill a mile or so to the west. The Roman town of Verulamium, second-largest town in Roman Britain after Londinium, was built alongside this in the valley of the River Ver a little nearer to the present town centre.

The mediaeval town grew up on the hill to the east of this around Benedictine St Albans Abbey. This at the spot where tradition has it that St Alban, the first British Christian martyr, was beheaded sometime before AD 324. It was, at one time, the principal abbey in England and the first draft of Magna Carta was drawn up there, reflecting its political importance. The Abbey Church (formally the Cathedral & Abbey Church of St Alban but still known locally as The Abbey) became the parish church when it was bought by the local people at the dissolution of the monasteries. It was made a cathedral in 1877 when the City Charter was granted. There is evidence that the original site was somewhat higher up the hill than the present building and there had certainly been successive abbeys before the current building was started in 1077.

St Albans School, which occupies a site to the West of the Abbey and includes the former Norman Abbey Gateway, was founded in AD 948 and is the only school in the English-speaking world to have educated a Pope. It included in its buildings until comparatively recently a converted former hat factory, a link with the town's industrial past. Nearby Luton was also a notable centre for the hat making industry.

The road between the abbey and the school, running down to Verulamium, is called Abbey Mill Lane. On this road are the palaces of the Bishops of St Albans and Hertford. The Fighting Cocks public house is at the Verulamium end of this road.

The growth of St Albans was generally slow before the 20th century, reflecting its status as a rural market town, a pilgrimage site, and the first overnight coaching stop of the route to and from London - a fact which also accounts for its many inns, many dating from Tudor times. In the inter-war years it became a popular centre for the electronics industry. In the post-World War II years it was expanded significantly as part of the post-War redistribution of population out of Greater London that also saw the creation of new towns.

The city today shows evidence of building and excavation from all periods of its history and it is a tourist destination. Notable buildings include the Abbey and the early 15th century Clock Tower (pictured). The clock tower is one of only two similar towers in England; it is also the site of an Eleanor cross, which was pulled down in 1703 due to neglect, replaced by the town pump. A fountain was erected in its place in 1874, now relocated to Victoria Place.

One of the roads that runs into the city of St Albans is Holywell Hill, which takes its name from the story of St Alban: legend has it that his severed head rolled down the hill from the execution site and into a well at the bottom (some versions have a well springing from the site at which the head stopped).

The mixed character of St Albans has made it a popular filming location. The area of Romeland, directly north of the Abbey Gateway and the walls of the Abbey and school grounds, can be seen masquerading as an Oxford college in some episodes of Inspector Morse (as can several local pubs). Fishpool Street, running from Romeland to St Michael's village, stood in for Hastings in some episodes of Foyle's War. Life Begins was filmed largely in and around St Albans. The Lady Chapel in the Abbey itself was used as a location for at least one scene in Sean Connery's 1995 film First Knight.

Twinning

St Albans is twinned with:

In addition, there are friendship links with:

Miscellany

  • The Royal Navy has used six vessels with the name HMS St Albans.
  • The first meeting of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) was held in St Albans. Although long thought to have taken place in the Farriers Arms in Lower Dagnall Street (which has a blue plaque commemorating the event), a number of those present insist that the meeting was actually held in the Lower Red Lion in Fishpool Street. The latter was certainly the first pub to revert to selling real ale (Young's Bitter) as a result of the Campaign. However, the local CAMRA website specifically states that its first meeting took place in the Farriers Arms on 20th November 1972. The organisation still has its head office in Hatfield Road. The local branch holds an annual beer festival in St Albans. In recent years this has been a four day event starting on a Wednesday near the end of September.
  • An experimental water tank was built alongside London Road, St Albans for the Vickers shipbuilding company in 1912 on a site measuring 680 by 100 feet. Three years later in 1915, the first private wind tunnel was also built here, but moved to their Weybridge works shortly after the First World War. From December 1918 the test tank was used in developing fuselage profiles for amphibious aircraft, such as the Vickers Type 54 Viking, completed during 1919.
  • St Albans is home to one of the country's oldest and finest indoor skateparks at the Pioneer Youth Club, in Heathlands Drive, next to the fire station. Its ramps are available to all skateboarders and inliners. A new outside mini ramp was built in March 2005. As well as being available to skateboarders, the Pioneer Club hosts regular gigs for local bands.
  • The local football team is St Albans City FC: its stadium is on the edge of Clarence Park and the team plays in the Conference South. There is also the Old Albanian Rugby Club, which has a large facility known as the Old Albanian sports complex or the Woollam Playing Fields to the north of the city centre and which is also the home of the Saracens A team and Zurich A League.
  • The 1957 April Fool's Day spoof edition of BBC documentary series Panorama, which dealt with the fictitious Swiss spaghetti harvest, was filmed partly at the (now closed) Pasta Foods factory on London Road, St Albans.

Notable people

See also

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