Open Writing

St Albans is a city in Hertfordshire, close to London. It is built over the ruins of the Roman town of Verulamium. This was the Romans’ first capital city in England, prior to founding the more famous Londinium. Before the Romans called it Verulamium, the site was occupied by a Celtic tribe, the Catuvellauni.

The Verulamium museum displays thousands of artefacts, ranging from burial goods found in a Catuvellauni royal grave to a reconstruction of a Roman kitchen, including the original hearth. There is a face, formed by forensic artists from the skull of a Roman nobleman, who had been buried in a beautifully-decorated lead coffin. The archaeologists named him Postumus: in an imaginative video clip, Postumus tells visitors how he lived and what the city was like during his life.

An exquisite statuette of Venus – or was she Persephone? – the scientists aren’t quite sure of her identity – was discovered in a shrine inside the remains of a Roman villa. She now gazes out from a glass-enclosed niche in the museum, her hands held out as if in supplication, her skirts whipping around her legs as if moved by an imaginary breeze.

The standard of life, almost two thousand years ago in Verulamium, was amazingly luxurious. Citizens enjoyed running water, central heating and private and public bath-houses. Ladies, gentlemen and children wore exquisite jewellery and beautiful clothes. They worshipped in various temples, played games and attended the theatre. Apart from the lack of motorised transport, anyone from the twenty-first century would have felt quite comfortable living there.

Several magnificent mosaic floors have been carefully lifted and are displayed on the walls of the museum. The tiles are tiny, their patterns intricate. In the park outside, another floor and some of the workings of a hypocaust, or bath-house, have been excavated and left in situ, well protected by a modern building.

The park is lovely, with massive trees spreading deep pools of shade over smooth green lawns where children run and call; there are tennis courts and a lake where ducks and swans can be seen through a gap in the remains of the Roman wall.

Leon, his son Anton and I walked through the park, into the town and up the hill towards the highest-placed Cathedral in England; it can be seen for miles. On the way to the Cathedral, we passed through the massive Monastery gateway. A plaque on one of the inner walls states: “The Great Gateway of the Monastery was erected in the 1360s and besieged in 1381 by the insurgents in the Peasants’ Revolt. The Third Printing Press in England is said to have been housed here in 1479. From 1553 till 1869 it was the Local Prison. Since 1871 it has formed part of St Albans School.”

Seeming, for a moment, to be out of her time, a perfectly ordinary, twenty-first-century woman came out of a small door in the great gateway; she emptied a tea-cup into the gutter before returning indoors. From the other side of the gateway poured chattering teenagers with hair in incongruous modern styles. They climbed into waiting BMW’s and huge four-wheel-drive vehicles that lined the narrow street, engines thrumming, and were driven away.

We walked through the graveyard and into the cathedral, where drop-cloths and scaffolding were very much in evidence. Not all of the building was being renovated; we were able to escape the dust and the hammer blows and to enjoy the peace of the vaulted chapels. This cathedral consists of a jumble of styles and periods: ancient archways with painted walls are cheek-to-cheek with soaring, gothic arches.

As we ambled around amazed at the intricate stone carvings, the organist rehearsed a medley of pieces, returning every few moments to the main theme of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. Little boys moved about, shoes clacking on the flagstones, red capes fluttering, lit by jewel-tones filtering through stained-glass windows. After a while, the three of us left the cathedral as the sounds of the boys’ choir soared through high, arched ceilings.

We ambled along the pavements of the old village, marvelling at the low-doored, buckle-roofed cottages with their colourful flower-baskets, their bottle-pane windows, and their young, prosperous owners arriving home in Bentleys and Audis.

By the time we passed the Six Bells, where we’d eaten earlier, we were parched. A little further along the street, an old mill house had been converted into a restaurant. We sat on outdoor benches, quenching our thirst, listening to the burbling stream, enjoying the late-afternoon sunshine and contemplating the massive, cracked mill-stone.

There is certainly much more to be seen in St Albans than any visitor can squeeze into one afternoon.

Perhaps, more than museums and artefacts, St Albans offers the realisation that, for thousands of years, before the ancient walls of St Albans Great Monastery Gateway, the Cathedral and the cottages of the village were built, ordinary people lived in this green part of England. Some things don’t change: in 2007 ordinary people still go about their daily lives, just as they did in AD 27– they love, learn, laugh and sometimes grieve as they walk the cobbled streets, enjoying the autumn sunshine just as their predecessors did.

Life, indeed, goes on, no matter what happens to individuals.

Until next time, ‘here comes Treble!’

Suggested reading: Barbara Erskine, in her latest novel, “Daughters of Fire”, brings the time of the Catuvelauni and their early contact with the Romans to vivid life. The book is gripping, and, judging by what we learned in the Verulamium museum, is based on meticulous research.

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Isabel Bradley