The New City of St Albans: 150 Years Ago

Book Here 

In September 1877, the royal charter confirming that the small town of St Albans was to become a city was read from the town hall balcony. The honour was welcomed with modest celebrations. Not everyone thought St Albans deserved it: one opponent described it as ‘a fourth- or fifth-rate market town, in point of population’, and a councillor thought the status was ‘but empty honour’ for a new city that was still tainted by memories of mid-century political corruption. A hundred years later, as the city and diocese celebrated their centenaries, the historian Asa Briggs described St Albans’s nineteenth-century growth as ‘sleepy’, in contrast to the large industrial centres that are usually associated with the idea of the ‘Victorian city’. In the year that marks the 150th anniversary of diocesan and city status, this lecture explores how St Albans evolved in the nineteenth century, and how city status became one element in the story of economic, social and political change. It challenges the idea that growth was ‘sleepy’, and asks what it meant for St Albans to be a city in the 1870s.

We are delighted to be hosting this event jointly with the Friends of St Albans Cathedral.

Please note that this event is taking place in-person and will be livestreamed and recorded. 

About Mark Freeman | Mark Freeman is professor of social history and education at University College London, and the president of St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society.