U3A St Albans Visit

Today we had a coach trip to St. Albans to visit the cathedral and Verulamium Museum.

This was the invite:

BURY ST EDMUNDS U3A 

VISIT TO ST. ALBANS CATHEDRAL AND VERULAMIUM MUSEUM (with time in St. Albans)

WEDNESDAY, 27TH MARCH, 2024

In the morning we will have a guided tour of St. Albans Cathedral the oldest site of continuous Christian worship in Britain.  It stands over the place where St. Alban, the first martyr, was buried after giving his life for his faith over 1700 years ago.  The building itself is a blend of architectural styles spanning a millennia and contains recycled Roman bricks from Verulamium.  Of special interest is Britain’s longest nave with 13th century wall paintings, a rare watching loft, a Norman crossing tower and the fully restored medieval shrines of St. Alban and St. Amphibalus, the priest who converted St. Alban to Christianity.    

An optional extra is a tower tour where after climbing 211 steps to the top of the oldest Cathedral tower in Britain you can experience fantastic views.  On the way up, see the magnificent Rose Window up close, explore the roof spaces and visit the ringing and bell chambers, before the final climb onto the roof of the tower.

In the afternoon we visit the Verulamium Museum.  Built on the site of one of the largest Roman cities in Britain, it is filled with ancient treasures and some of the finest mosaics outside of the Mediterranean.  You can also see recent discoveries such as the Sandridge Hoard, a collection of 159 Roman gold coins.  

We left Ram Meadow a little late as we had to wait for a couple who had been delayed but arrived just a little after 10am. Dawn and I were doing the tower tour too, but we weren't allowed to do the final climb up to the roof as they have peregrine falcons nesting there.

Here are a few of my photos

Arriving at the Cathedral.

I'd told my friends Hilary and Hilary we were going to be in St Albans, where the live, and they came and found us for 5 minutes before the start of our tour. Thank-you for coming to say hello! I forgot to photograph them before we said goodbye as our tour was starting, until I looked back at them talking to a friend.

Our tour guide was excellent and told us all about the history of the cathedral as well as explaining what we could see. Read about it here and here. At 85 metres, the Cathedral has the longest Nave in England. The walls features a mix of Norman arches dating back to 1077 and arches in the Early English style of 1200.

The medieval wall paintings are said to be the best preserved collection in any English Cathedral. They are rare survivals, the earliest dating from the early 1200's. We saw them restored to their former glory with light projections as we sat in the nave listening to our guide.

The rood screen behind the nave altar s is of stone and was probably built by Abbot de la Mare (1349-96) after the previous one had been damaged by the collapse of the South arcade. The original statues in the niches were destroyed in the Dissolution of the monasteries in the 1500s. The current statues are new, designed by young people of the Abbey community. The seven martyrs are:

1. Oscar Romero – Roman Catholic Archbishop of El Salvador, who spoke out against poverty, social injustice and torture of the totalitarian regime in his country. He was assassinated in 1980 while celebrating Mass. The beatification for Oscar Romero was held in San Salvador on 23 May this year.

2. St Alban Roe – a Roman Catholic, imprisoned for a time in St Albans Abbey Gatehouse and hanged for treason in London in 1642 for being a Roman Catholic priest

3. St Amphibalus – a Christian priest given shelter by Alban in the third century AD when Christianity was still proscribed

4. St Alban – Britain’s first saint, a citizen of Roman Verulamium, martyred by the Romans on the site of the present day Cathedral

5. George Tankerfield – a Protestant, burnt to death in Romeland, overlooking St Alban’s Abbey, in 1555 because he refused to accept the doctrine of transubstantiation

6. St Elisabeth Romanova – granddaughter of Queen Victoria who married into the Russian Royal Family and converted to the Russian Orthodox Church. In her widowhood she became a nun and Abbess before being killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918

7. Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Lutheran pastor and theologian imprisoned in a concentration camp for his opposition to the Nazis, tried without witnesses or defence and hanged in April 1945

The Wallingford High Altar at the end of the Quire. The impressive reredos was erected by Abbot Wallingford (1476-92) and cost 1,000 marks, The statues are Victorian replacements (1884–1889) of the originals, destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries, when the screen itself was also damaged. Statues of St Alban and St Amphibalus stand on either side of the altar.

The 13th century Presbytery vaulted wooden ceiling was built with oak presented to the abbey by King Henry III. It was redecorated in the 15th century and bears the symbols of John the Evangelist and John the Baptist. In the 20th century John Rogers was appointed as Architect and Surveyor of the Fabric. He uncovered extensive death watch beetle damage in the presbytery vault and oversaw the repair (1930–31).

The colourful design you see today in the magnificent Rose Window was added in 1989, replacing an earlier Victorian plain glass window. It was unveiled in 1989 by Diana, Princess of Wales. The stained glass windows in the cathedral date from between 1376 and 2006 and include a nod to royalty, a tribute to those who fought in the First World War and more.

The lady chapel used to be used as a school in the 16th century.

The Shrine of St. Alban. Saint Alban is known as Britain’s first saint and was buried on this site 1700 years ago. There has probably been a shrine here since then.

A new shrine was built in 1308 but was destroyed when the Abbey was closed down in 1539. Pieces from this shrine were used to restore the shrine in 1872 and again in 1993. There is also a small memorial chapel underneath the main shrine chapel. This belongs to Duke Humphrey of Gloucester (d. 1447), the only royal to be buried at St Albans Cathedral.

The Watching Loft was constructed in c. 1400 and is the only surviving medieval wooden watching loft in England. Monastic officials or tenants would sit in there and keep an eye on pilgrims visiting the Shrine.

 

Amphibalus was the Christian priest that St Alban sheltered from persecution. Tradition says the priest was later martyred at Redbourn. This shrine base was built for his relics in the middle ages but was smashed into pieces at the Reformation, as was St Albans shrine. These pieces were rediscovered in 1872. In 2020 this shrine was cleaned and restored with new carvings to replace some of its lost stones.

A rather smaller group of us did the tower tour. St Albans is the only major church in England with an 11^th century great crossing tower still standing. It is also the only cathedral tower in England to be built using Roman bricks. In some places, the walls of the tower are seven feet thick and the whole structure weighs 5000 tonnes.

We got up close to the Rose window.

We were asked to be careful not to drop anything.

We got a view West through a small window here.

We got close to the tower ceiling.  Although the current ceiling panels do due back to a cathedral refurbishment in the 1950s, they are actually modelled on the 15th century originals. The panels feature the red rose of the House of Lancaster, and the white rose of the House of York. The Lancastrian and York families were merged with the marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, so the Tudor rose is actually both combined. Historians think that the ceiling may have been commissioned to  commemorate the first Battle of St. Albans (fought in 1455) and the second Battle of St. Albans (fought in 1461). 

The view looking down.

We climbed some more and saw the vaulted  Presbytery ceiling from above and the repairs that had been done and reinforcement added. From above the vaults looked like upturned boats.

We then crossed to climb to the bellringers room. Here we got a view along the length of the cathedral nave below over the west end.

We got a demonstration of how the bells work...

...and shown the notation of a change. This is the well known Plain Bob Minor.

We could see it was raining now as we headed for the bells.

In total, there are 23 bells housed in the tower. The main ring of 12 bells (with a sharp 2nd) was cast in 2010 by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. These replaced the previous ring, 8 of which still remain in the tower and are used for the clock chime and carillon; the carillon used to play a different tune every day of the week, but is currently broken. These are the old bells, now used for the clock chimes.

This is the new set of bells that were installed in 2010.

It is perhaps a shame that the plaque showing the donors' gifts is displayed here in the bell tower where nobody, except visitors like us, can see it.

Our tour guides watch was running 7 minutes slow. We were due to be back down the stairs by 1pm, but we were still next to the bells when the click struck 1pm. It was loud!

We went for a little walk in the city centre, visiting the market. It was raining quite hard now but it soon eased off.

We had told Pat we wouldn't take the bus to the museum but walk it instead.

Crossing the river Ver. It was rather full and overflowing.

One of the guides had recommended The Six Bells just round the corner from the museum for lunch.

We enjoyed that. Then it was on to the Verulamium Museum.

We visited The Hypocaust first. 

The mosaic is wonderfully preserved and you can see how the underfloor heating works.

Back in the main museum building we were most impressed by these roman villa walls...

...and mosaics.

We had a little walk for some fresh air, but it was soon time to board the coach again for the journey back to Bury St Edmunds.

We left about 4:30pm as planned but ran into some traffic problems. Our driver found a cunning route to avoid the worst of the delays that included travelling up a scenic B road in East Hertfordshire that I had never been on before. But we did get stuck on the Newmarket Bypass for a while in the aftermath of an earlier accident and didn't get back to Ram Meadow until nearly 7:30pm. But never mind. It was a great day out. Thank-you Pat for organising it and our driver Steve for getting us there and back.

You can see more of my photos here on Flickr.