THE NEIGHBOURHOOD.
#The Great Gatehouse.#--In the days of its prosperity the Abbey was
surrounded by a wall within which, as was usually the case, were placed
all the buildings that were necessary for monastic life: cloister,
dormitory, refectory, kitchen, chapter-house, infirmary, guest-house,
stables, dovecote, granary, garden, orchard, vineyard, lodgings for the
abbot, prior, cellarer, cook, and servants, fish-house, fish-ponds, as
well as cemeteries for dead brethren. A number of gatehouses gave access
to this inclosure: the Great Gate, which alone remains standing; the
Waxhouse Gate, where the tapers used for burning before the shrines were
made; the Water-gate, St. Germain's gate, and others. The chief of these
was the Great Gate to the west of the Abbey Church. It was built in the
time of Thomas de la Mare about 1365, on the site of a previously
existing gatehouse which had been destroyed by a violent gale a few
years earlier. It was not only a gateway, but a prison wherein offending
monks, and also laymen of the town, over which the Abbot had civic
jurisdiction, were imprisoned. The Gatehouse was stormed by rioters in
the time of Wat Tyler's rebellion, the monks in their terror giving wine
and beer to their assailants, but news arriving of Wat Tyler's death,
the rioters dispersed; the ringleaders were tried and condemned to
death, among them John Ball, who, with his seventeen condemned
companions, passed the time between their trial and execution in the
dungeons beneath the Gatehouse. In 1480 a printing press was set up in
this gatehouse; after the dissolution it was used as the borough gaol.
During the Napoleonic wars some French prisoners were confined within
the walls. In 1868 the Gatehouse was found too small for use as a gaol,
and a new prison was built near the Midland Station. The Gatehouse was
bought by the governors of the grammar school, and in 1870 the school
was removed from the Lady Chapel to the Gatehouse. There are dungeons
beneath the level of the roadway; over the archway is the large room
where the sessions used to be held, with other rooms on either side. In
this building some old chimney-pieces may still be seen. Although the
present foundation dates from the reign of Edward VI., yet a school had
existed in St. Albans from very early time. Some think it was founded by
Ulsinus. Be this as it may, it is certain that Geoffrey de Gorham, who
was afterwards Abbot (1119-1146), first came to England during the time
of Richard of Albini (the fifteenth Abbot), with a view of being master
of the school. In 1195 we read that the school had more scholars than
any other in England. The school in these early days stood to the north
of the Great Gate on the other side of the street that runs down the
hill on the north side of the triangular graveyard known as Romelands,
where a Protestant martyr, one George Tankerfield, a cook, born in York,
but living in London, was burnt on August 26th, 1555, during the reign
of Mary I.
#Sopwell Nunnery.#--There are a few remains of Sopwell Nunnery in a
field near the river Ver, to the south-east of the city. They may be
reached by taking the first turning to the right hand after crossing the
bridge on the way from the city down Holywell Hill. This nunnery was
founded by Geoffrey of Gorham, sixteenth Abbot, about the middle of the
twelfth century. Two women, pious and ascetic, had taken up their abode
on this spot in a hut which they built for themselves, and Geoffrey
determined to build them a more permanent dwelling, and make them the
nucleus of a religious house. They accepted the Benedictine Rule, and
gradually the nunnery increased in size, and many ladies of high birth
took the veil here. One of the abbesses wrote the "Boke of St. Albans,"
not, as might be imagined, an account of the saint or of the religious
house, but a treatise on hawking, hunting, and fishing. It was printed
in 1483 at the St. Albans printing press. When the nunnery was
dissolved, Sir Richard Lee, to whom the Abbey lands were granted, turned
it into a dwelling-house for himself. The ruins consist of ivy-clad
walls of brick and flint, pierced by square-headed windows, but
containing few interesting features.
The name is said to have been derived from the fact that the two women
mentioned above soaked or sopped their dry bread in water drawn from the
Holy Well or some well in the immediate neighbourhood of their hut.
#St. Peter's Church.#--This church, standing at no great distance from
the cathedral, may be reached by taking the footway called the
Cloisters, crossing High Street, passing between the Clock Tower and the
picturesque and ancient inn, the Fleur de Lys, and through the quaint
street of gabled houses known as French Row, into St. Peter's Street.
The church was originally built about 948 A.D., by Ulsinus, the sixth
Abbot of St. Albans, but none of his work remains. It seems to have been
almost entirely rebuilt at the end of the fifteenth century, and most of
it is Perpendicular in character. It has a central tower rebuilt about a
hundred years ago, and until that time had a transept. There is a
clerestory on either side of the nave. The chancel and the west end with
its circular window show signs of Lord Grimthorpe's style of
restoration. The tower contains a fine peal of ten bells. In the windows
of the south aisle is some richly coloured modern Belgian glass by
Capronnier; in the windows of the north aisle are some fragments of
fourteenth or fifteenth century glass, including the arms of Edmund, the
fifth son of Edward III., from whom in the male line Edward IV. was
descended, though he also traced his descent and his claim to the throne
from Lionel, the third son, through his daughter Philippa.
In the churchyard, which is of considerable extent, many of those who
fell in the two battles of St. Albans were buried.
#St. Michael's Church.#--St. Michael's Church is further from the
cathedral than St. Peter's. To reach it one must go westward from the
Clock Tower, along High Street and its continuations, down the hill past
Romelands, where, as we have seen, George Tankerfield, condemned by
Bishop Bonner as a Protestant heretic, was burnt at the stake. At last a
bridge over the Ver is reached, and, turning round to the left after
crossing it, we see St. Michael's Church before us. It has within the
last ten years lost its Saxon tower, a new one with no pretention to
beauty, pierced by two pentagonal windows in the third stage, having
been built on a slightly different foundation. It stands within the area
once inclosed by the walls of Verulamium, and Sir Gilbert Scott
conjectured that it was originally the Basilica of the Roman city
altered for Christian worship; but probably, though it may stand on the
same site, it is of more recent date, though still of great age. Like
the cathedral, its walls are built of Roman brick and flint. The plan is
irregular: there is a nave and chancel, a large south aisle, or rather
chantry, the eastern gable of which is of half-timber construction,
below which are two tall round-headed windows far apart, with a small
circular opening between them; the western gable has an opening with
louvre boards. The tower projects from the north aisle, its western wall
being flush with the west end of the nave; on the outside in the south
wall of the chancel is a canopied niche over a flat slab a few inches
above the level of the ground. The south door, within a porch, has a
pointed top beneath a wide, round-headed arch springing from imposts.
The arcading of the nave was formed by cutting arches through what
probably were at one time the outside walls of the church; two of these
on the south side open into the chapel. The carved oak pulpit of early
seventeenth-century work, with its sounding-board and iron frame for the
hour-glass, demands attention; but the chief attraction of the church
for many is the alabaster statue of Francis Bacon, which is placed in a
niche in the north wall of the chancel. He wished to be buried in this
church, as his mother was already buried there, and moreover it was the
parish church of his house at Gorhambury, and the only Christian church
within the walls of ancient Verulam, from which he took one of his
titles.
[Illustration: MONUMENT OF LORD BACON. "_Sic sedebat._"]
#St. Stephen's Church.#--There are two ways of getting to this church:
either by following the road that runs south from St. Michael's, and
after reaching the top of the hill turning sharply to the left; or by
going from the centre of the city down Holywell Hill and straight on,
past the London and North-Western Railway Station, up St. Stephen's
Hill. The church spire is a conspicuous landmark. The churchyard is
exceedingly pretty, and the church most interesting. It was originally
built in the tenth century by Abbot Ulsinus, rebuilt in the time of
Henry I., restored in the fifteenth, and again by Sir Gilbert Scott in
the nineteenth century. The south porch is of timber; under it is a
square-headed doorway; to the east of it is a chapel once called "the
Leper's Chapel," but probably a chantry, now used as a vestry. There is
a small aisle on the south side. The spire is a broach and stands at the
west end. On the north side of the nave is a wide, blocked-up,
round-headed arch; through the blocking wall a pointed doorway was cut,
but this is also now blocked up. There is a door of Perpendicular style,
with a square-headed label terminated by heads much weathered, in the
west wall of the tower. The walls of this church are of the usual
materials, flint and Roman brick.
The lectern is of brass, and bears round its foot the inscription
"Georgius Creichtoun Episcopus Dunkeldensis." There were two Scotch
bishops of this name; both lived in the sixteenth century. How the
lectern reached St. Albans no one knows for certain, but it may possibly
have been part of the plunder carried off by Sir Richard Lee from
Scotland. It was hidden for safety in a grave at the time of the civil
wars, but was found again in 1748 when the vault was opened.
[Illustration: THE OLD ROUND HOUSE, "THE FIGHTING COCKS."]
#The Clock Tower.#--This is a most conspicuous object in the city,
standing near the market-place, almost due north of the Lady Chapel. It
was built at the beginning of the fifteenth century in order that the
curfew bell might be hung in it. This had been cast some seventy years
before the building of the tower, and had hung in the central tower of
the Abbey Church; it weighs about a ton. It bears the inscription:
"Missi de coelis, habeo nomen Gabrielis." The tower was restored under
the direction of Sir Gilbert Scott in 1865, and in the process has lost
most of the interest it possessed.
#The Old Round House.#--This curious old house, also known as "The
Fighting Cocks," stands near the river at the bottom of the roadway that
leads down from the town through the Great Gate, and probably occupies
the position of the Abbey gate that was known as St. Germain's Gate.
There is little doubt that the foundations of this house date back to
the time of the monastery, and may have been the foundations of the
gateway. The cellars, it is said, appear to have an opening into some
subterranean way. The name of "Fighting Cocks" no doubt indicates that
after the dissolution of the monastery a cockpit existed here. It is
said that it was at St. Germain's Gatehouse that the monks kept their
fishing tackle, rods and nets. A claim is made for this building, that
it is the oldest inhabited house in England, a claim that many other
buildings may well dispute.
* * * * *
INDEX
Abbots, chronological account of, 82-103.
Ælfric, Abbot, 84.
Ælfric II., Abbot, 4.
Aisles of nave, interior, south, 44,
north, 46;
exterior, south, 26,
north, 31;
of choir (south), 48.
Alban, St., 4;
site of his martyrdom, 5, 6.
Altarpiece, 57,
(old) 68.
Amphibalus, St., 5;
shrine of, 13, 14, 63.
Andrew's, St., Church, 12, 31, 48.
Bacon, Lord, his monument, 110.
Baluster shafts, Saxon, 50.
Battles of St. Albans, 71, 101.
Bells, 78.
Berkhampstead, John of, Abbot, 96.
Bishops of St. Albans, 104.
Bishop's Throne, 53.
Boreman, Robert, last Abbot, 15, 103.
Bricks, Roman, 10, 24.
Catton, Robert, Abbot, 103.
Ceiling of choir and lantern, 53.
Chapels (apsidal) of transept (now destroyed), 51, 53.
Choir (exterior), 28;
ritual, 53.
Christina, Prioress of Markyate, 49.
Church bought by the town, 16.
Claughton, Bishop, 18.
Clerestory, nave, 42.
Clock Tower of the town, 111.
Cloister, site of, 26.
"Cloisters, The," 31.
D'Aubeny, Richard, Abbot, 87.
Dedication of church, 7.
De la Mare, Thomas, Abbot, 98.
De la Moote, John, Abbot, 99.
De Marinis, John, Abbot, 96.
Dimensions of the Cathedral, 115.
Door, Abbot's, 26.
Doors, from the western entrance, 68.
Eadfrith, Abbot, 83.
Eadmer, Abbot, 7, 84.
Eadric, Abbot, 82.
Ealdred, Abbot, 84.
Eversden, Hugh of, Abbot, 97 (_v._ Hugh).
Fall of piers in 1323, 13.
Floor of the church, 35, 36.
Font, 46.
Frescoes in the nave, 40;
in the choir, 53.
Frithric, Abbot, 85.
Gatehouse, The Great, 106.
Geoffrey of Gorham, Abbot, 88,107.
Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, 6.
Gloucester, Humphrey, Duke of, 62, 76;
his monument, 76.
Gorham, Abbots, Geoffrey of, 88;
Robert of, 89.
Grammar School, 16, 107.
Henry VI., King, 101.
Hertford, John of, Abbot, 93.
Heyworth, William, Abbot, 100.
Hugh of Eversden, Abbot, 13, 14, 44, 70, 97.
John de Cella, Abbot, 10, 12, 92.
John de Marinis, Abbot, 96.
John of Hertford, Abbot, 13, 43.
John of Wheathampstead, Abbot, 14, 101.
Lady Chapel, the, 20, 29, 68-72.
Length of the building, 36, 37.
Leofric, Abbot, 85.
Leofstan, Abbot, 85.
Mandeville, Sir John, 37.
Markyate, Benedictine cell, 49.
Mentmore, Michael of, Abbot, 14, 98.
Monastery (Benedictine), founded, 6;
history of, 81.
Nave, interior, 36-48.
Norton, John of, Abbot, 70, 95.
Nunnery, Sopwell, 107.
Organ, the, 44.
Paul of Caen, Abbot, 7, 24, 32, 86.
Plan of Norman church, 9.
Porches (thirteenth century), of west front, 10-12.
Presbytery, 54, 61.
Pulpit in nave, 44;
in choir, 61.
Ramryge, Thomas, Abbot, 58-60, 103;
his chantry, 14, 15, 60, 70.
Randulf, Abbot, 89.
Rectors of St. Albans, 104.
Retro-choir, 63, 67.
Richard of Wallingford, Abbot, 14, 97.
Robert of Gorham, Abbot, 89.
Roger the Hermit, 49.
Rood-screen, 42.
Roof restored, 18.
Round House, 112.
Saint's Chapel, the, 72.
St. Andrew's Church, 12, 31, 48.
St. Michael's Church, 108.
St. Peter's Church, 108.
St. Stephen's Church, 110.
Shrine of St. Alban, 72-75.
Sigar, hermit, 49, 50.
Slype, the, 20, 52.
Sopwell Nunnery, 107.
Stokes, John, Abbot, 101.
Stoup (north aisle of nave), 46;
in south choir aisle, 61.
Symeon, Abbot, 91.
Transept (exterior), 27, 29;
(interior), 50, 52.
Triforium, nave, 41, 42.
Tower, central, 10, 14, 17, 31, 79;
interior, 53.
Towers, western, 8, 9.
Trumpington, William of, Abbot, 93.
Verulamium, 4, 7;
Synod held at, 6.
Wallingford, Richard of, Abbot, 61, 97.
Wallingford screen, 21, 57-59, 76.
Wallingford, William of, Abbot, 102.
Waring, Abbot, 49, 91.
Watching Loft, 66, 68, 75.
Wax-house, 29.
Weatherall, G., first rector, 16.
West front, 10, 19, 23.
Wheathampstead, John of, Abbot, 71, 100, 101;
his chantry, 57.
William of Trumpington, Abbot, 12, 93.
William of Wallingford, Abbot, 14, 102.
Willigod, Abbot, 82.
Windows in transept, 19.
Wolsey, Thomas, Abbot, 103.
Wulnoth, Abbot, 83.
Wulsig, Abbot, 82.
Wulsin, Abbot, 84.
* * * * *
DIMENSIONS OF THE CATHEDRAL.[13]
Total length, external 550 ft.
" " internal 520 ft.
Length of high roofs 425 ft.
" of nave from west door to screen 205 ft.
" of choir and presbytery 169 ft.
" of Lady Chapel 57 ft.
" of transept, interior 177 ft.
Width of nave with aisles 75 ft. 4 in.
" " without aisles, between piers 29 ft. 6 in. to 31 ft. 6 in.
" of presbytery 75 ft. to 78 ft.
" of west front, exterior 105 ft.
" of transept, interior 32 ft. to 33 ft. 6 in.
" " exterior 54 ft. 4 in.
" of Lady Chapel, interior 24 ft.
Diameter of tower piers, east and west 16 ft.
Distance between tower piers each way 24 ft.
Height of tower piers 43 ft.
" " arches 55 ft.
" of tower 144 ft.
Width of tower, east and west, exterior 47 ft.
" " north and south, exterior 45 ft.
Height of nave ceiling (from floor) 66 ft. 4 in.
" of ridge of high roofs 96 ft.
" of Lady Chapel vault 33 ft.
Total internal area (about) 39,240 sq. ft.
Height of floor above mean sea-level 340 ft.
[13] These are the dimensions given by Lord Grimthorpe; the
altitudes, except when otherwise stated, are measured from the
level of the floor at the west doorways.
[Illustration: GROUND-PLAN OF ST. ALBANS CATHEDRAL.]