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Fast Facts

Inspired by Alban, Britain's first Christian martyr, sustained by our tradition of hospitality, worship, and learning, and renowned as a place of pilgrimage, the Cathedral is a community of welcome and witness.

Why were the medieval abbey churches built so LARGE?

  • to appear like the 'heavenly Jerusalem' to the illiterate pilgrims; also to impress them with its decoration and magnificent processions.
  • there was great rivalry between the different churches and their patrons.
  • Abbot de Cella extended nave at St Albans to make it longer than any other it now holds 1200 seats.

Some of our dimensions

  • height of the bell tower: 144 feet ;
  • total area footprint of the Cathedral: 52,800 square feet (4,900 square metres)

What does every cathedral in the world have?

  • A Cathedra – the Greek word for chair or throne; the bishop’s seat.

What is the name of the Christian priest who converted Alban?

  • Amphibalus, Greek term for cloak or a covering that you throw over both shoulders. This highlights Alban’s selfless act of exchanging cloaks with the priest, in order to save his life.
  • The Amphibalus pedestal shrine is one of 8 medieval pedestal shrines in the country; St Albans has 2 of them.

Where are the monks and abbots buried?

  • under your feet as you walk through the church; vintry garden or monks’ graveyard, both near the Sumpter yard car park.
  • The abbots now lay in the Presbytery under the Kindersley slate. They made way for the new Chapter House and were re-interred at a Benedictine ceremony in 1979.

Verulamium, the third largest town in Roman Britain, where Alban lived, was burned to the ground by whom?

  • Boudicca in AD61; the Romans then rebuilt the city in stone.

The Abbey has wonderful wall paintings dating from the 1200’s, but where is the oldest 'painting' in the Abbey?

  • On the second Norman pillar, walking east, in the nave, look for the remains of a Roman wall painting on a tile (under the painting of the Madonna and child).

What is the oldest item in the Abbey?

  • The Frosterley marble altar slab in the south presbytery aisle; not a true marble but a black/grey limestone with plentiful large whitish fossil corals; it dates from the prehistoric period possibly 350 million years old!

Which is the oldest tree in the Abbey grounds?

  • In 1803, Countess Spencer, a relative of Diana, Princess of Wales, planted a cedar tree from Lebanon in Sumpter yard.

Which Bishop of St Albans became an Archbishop of Canterbury?

  • Lord Robert Runcie, Bishop 1970-80; Archbishop 1980-90. He is now buried in the north churchyard of the Abbey.