Van Hire St Albans

Travel down the A2 or A5 in your Thrifty van hire, and you’d be driving the ancient Roman road of Watling Street. Located along this, is the country town of St Albans. Named originally by the British/Celtic Catuvellauni tribe as ‘Verlamion’, it was renamed by the Romans to ‘Verulamium’ (the second largest Roman town after Londinium), and after the Romans left to ‘Verlamchester’, before finally obtaining the name by which it is known today.

Legend has it that Saint Alban, the first martyr in Christian Britain, was beheaded in the years before 324AD, and lends his name to the abbey built by the Benedictines – the abbey later becoming the principle abbey in England, and the place where the first draft of the Magna Carta was developed.

The town expanded around the abbey, and the church (Saint Albans Cathedral, previously the Cathedral and Abbey Church of Saint Alban) was bought by the local people in the town after the dissolution of the priory in 1539. When the city charter was granted the church became a cathedral. It is believed that the original church was located higher up the hill, and there were several abbeys before the current one, which was built in 1077. Make sure you stop by in your Thrifty van hire, and wander around the old church-come-cathedral.

The school to the west of the abbey, Saint Albans School, was founded in 948AD, and contains the 1300s Abbey Gateway. It is also the only school in the English-speaking world to have educated a Pope, that being Pope Adrian IV.

Park your thrifty van hire outside the old pub, ‘The Fighting Cocks’, situated on Abbey Mill Lane, at the Verulamium Park end of the road. The pub lays claim to being one of the oldest in England, with foundations dating back to 793 although it only moved to its current location in 1539.