St Albans Cathedral

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Sat, 24/05/2025 - 00:00

St Albans Cathedral in Hertfordshire is a grand old lady at whose doors I was pleased to call this month. Although it is a place about which I have previously written, unflatteringly, calling in person improved my opinions, especially as it is one of our great cathedrals which does charge for entry. The tower appears to have been built from the cannibalised stone of the Roman city of Virulamium, in a heavy Norman Romanesque style, with its rounded arches and thick pillars.

The new, post-Roman city developed around the Cathedral (formerly the Abbey) of St Alban, while the Roman city below declined and decayed. The site of the church was chosen because it was thought that Alban himself, the first recorded Christian martyr in the British Isles, was executed on the spot. Bede, rather fancifully, writes:

Being led to execution, he came to a river, which, with a most rapid course, ran between the wall of the town and the arena where he was to be executed. He there saw a great multitude of persons of both sexes, and of divers ages and conditions, who were doubtless assembled by Divine inspiration, to attend the blessed confessor and martyr, and had so filled the bridge over the river, that he could scarce pass over that evening. In truth, almost all had gone out, so that the judge remained in the city without attendance. St. Alban, therefore, urged by an ardent and devout wish to attain the sooner to martyrdom, drew near to the stream, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, whereupon the channel was immediately dried up, and he perceived that the water had given place and made way for him to pass. Among the rest, the executioner, who should have put him to death, observed this, and moved doubtless by Divine inspiration hastened to meet him at the appointed place of execution, and casting away the sword which he had carried ready drawn, fell at his feet, praying earnestly that he might rather be accounted worthy to suffer with the martyr, whom he was ordered to execute, or, if possible, instead of him. Whilst he was thus changed from a persecutor into a companion in the faith and truth, and the other executioners rightly hesitated to take up the sword which was lying on the ground, the holy confessor, accompanied by the multitude, ascended a hill, about half a mile from the arena, beautiful, as was fitting, and of most pleasing appearance, adorned, or rather clothed, everywhere with flowers of many colours, nowhere steep or precipitous or of sheer descent, but with a long, smooth natural slope, like a plain, on its sides, a place altogether worthy from of old, by reason of its native beauty, to be consecrated by the blood of a blessed martyr. On the top of this hill, St. Alban prayed that God would give him water, and immediately a living spring, confined in its channel, sprang up at his feet, so that all men acknowledged that even the stream had yielded its service to the martyr.

-The Ecclesiastical History of the English People

Eventually, his guards get round to beheading him and sealing the deal, the holiness of the spot now bearing the cathedral’s mighty weight. I suspect that the dying man was not so concerned about thirst, nor his oppressors so overawed by his sanctity, as Bede suggests. Alban was said to have been a soldier himself who, impressed by a Christian presbyter, swapped clothes with him to effect his escape. Despite the daft legends quoted above, I think he was a real martyr who suffered for the real gospel. To think that so great an edifice should be constructed in his memory! Yet this is nothing to the glory and honour he received upon being translated to heaven, to the very throne room of Christ for whose sake he died.