St Albans

St. Albans, a city and municipal borough of Hertfordshire, on Watling Street and the river Ver, 21 miles N.N.W. of London. It is situated on the slope of a hill near the site of the Roman station, Verulamium, which was originally a British town. A Benedictine monastery was founded here by Offa, King of Mercia, in 793 to commemorate St. Alban, a Roman soldier who suffered martyrdom some 500 years earlier. The abbey-church was rebuilt in the latter part of the 11th century, and preserves its Norman character in spite of various new features in each of the Gothic styles. It is exceptionally long, the distance from E. to W. being 548 feet. Since 1871 the church has been restored, mainly by Lord Grimthorpe, and in 1877 it was made the cathedral of a new diocese. The shrine of the saint, reduced to fragments in the 16th century, has been reconstructed by Sir Gilbert Scott, and there is a fine monument of Humphrey. Duke of Gloucester. The grammar school, founded 1553, is now located in the abbey gatehouse.