ST. ALBANS, a city, municipal borough, and market town in the St. Albans parliamentary division of Hertfordshire, Eng land, on the L.M.S. and L.N.E. railways, 20 m. north-west of London. Pop. (1931) 28,625. St. Albans became the seat of a bishop in 1877 ; the diocese covering the greater part of Essex and Hertfordshire, with small portions of Cambridgeshire, Bed fordshire and Buckinghamshire. The great cathedral, or abbey church, is finely situated on the steep hill, above the small river Ver, on which the central part of the city is placed.
History.—Shortly after the martyrdom of St. Alban, prob ably in 3o3, a church was built on the spot, and in 793 Offa, king of Mercia, who professed to have discovered the relics of the martyr, founded in his honour a monastery for Benedictines, which became one of the richest and most important houses of that order in the kingdom. The abbots, Ealdred and Ealmer, at the close of the loth century began to break up the ruins of the old Roman city of Verulamium for materials to construct a new abbey church; but its erection was delayed till the time of William the Conqueror, when Paul of Caen, a relative of Archbishop Lanfranc, was in 1077 appointed abbot. The church was built on the model of St. Stephen's, Caen, but on a larger scale. It was consecrated in 1115, but had been finished some years be fore. Of the original Norman church the principal portions now remaining are the eastern bays of the nave, the tower and the transepts, but the main outlines of the building are still those planned by Paul. It is thus one of the most important specimens of Norman architecture in England, with the special character istic that, owing to the use of the flat broad Roman tile, the Norman portions are peculiarly bare and stern.
About 1155 Robert de Gorham repaired and beautified the early shrine and rebuilt the chapter-house and part of the cloister; but nothing of his work now remains except part of a very beautiful doorway discovered in recent times. About 1200 Abbot John de Cella pulled down the west front and portions of the north and south aisles. He began the erection of the west front in a new and enriched form, and his work was continued by his successor William de Trumpyngtone in a plainer manner. In 1257 the eastern portion was pulled down, and between the middle of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century a sanctuary, ante-chapel and lady chapel were added, all re markably fine specimens of the architecture of the period. In 1323 two great columns on the south side suddenly fell, and this necessitated the rebuilding of five bays of the south aisle and the Norman cloisters. Various incongruous additions were made dur ing the Perpendicular period, and much damage was also done during the dissolution of the abbeys to the finer work in the interior. Structural dangers gave rise to an extensive restoration and partial rebuilding, begun under the direction of Sir Gilbert Scott, and completed in 1894 by Lord Grimthorpe, some of whose work was, and remains, the subject of much adverse criticism.
The abbey's extreme length outside is 55o ft., which is exceeded by Winchester by 6 ft. The nave (292 ft.) is the longest Gothic nave in the world and exceeds that of Winchester by about 20 ft. The length of the transepts is 175 ft. inside. The monastic build ings have all disappeared except the great gateway.
St. Michael's church, within the site of Verulamium, was originally constructed in the loth century. Considerable portions of the Norman building remain. The church contains the tomb of Lord Chancellor Bacon. St. Stephen's church, dating from the same period, contains some good examples of Norman archi tecture. The restored clock-house in the market-place was built by one of the abbots in the reign of Henry VIII.
To the south-west of the present city of St. Albans stood the ancient Verulamium (q.v.), one of the oldest towns in Britain, on Watling Street. The ruins served as a quarry not only to the builders of the Abbey, but also for the other churches and the monastic buildings of St. Albans, and Roman bricks are found even in the fabric of the churches of neighbouring villages, as at Sandridge, 2 i M. north-east. After being burnt by Boadicea (A.D. 61), Verulamium revived, and its church was famous early in the 8th century. The origin of the royal castle of Kingsbury is variously assigned to the 6th and 8th centuries. In the 9th and oth centuries the abbots enlarged the town, which was confirmed to them as a borough by Henry II. In 1253 a charter gave borough jurisdiction to the good men of St. Albans; and there were several succeeding charters. In 1877 St. Albans became a city. Two burgesses were returned to the parliament of 1306-1307, and to others; after 1336, such right fell into abeyance until its re sumption in 1553. Its abolition, as a result of corrupt election eering practices, took place in 1852.
During Wat Tyler's insurrection the monastery was besieged by the townspeople, many of whom were executed in consequence. At St. Albans the Lancastrians were defeated on the 21st of May 1455, their leader, the duke of Somerset, being killed, and Henry VI. taken prisoner; here, too, Queen Margaret defeated the earl of Warwick on the 17th of February 1461. During the civil wars the town was garrisoned for the parliament. One of the earliest printing presses in the kingdom was set up in the abbey, and a number of books were printed there in the late 15th century.
See Victoria County History, Herts, vol. Peter Newcome, The History of the Abbey of St. Albans (London, 1793) ; and Chronica monasterii S. Albani, edited by H. T. Riley for the "Rolls" series (1863 1876).