traditional account generally given is that two females of the city of Verulam having wandered to where St. Alban's now stands (it being then a wood), they were benighted, and from the site of the present building first descried a light, which enabled them to retrace their steps; and in order to prevent the recurrence of such an event, to themselves or others, they caused a high tower to be erected, from whence might be more easily ascertained the way out of the wood. Another account is, that it was built for the purpose of a watch tower, to give an alarm on the approach of an enemy towards the city.
"It consists of a high square tower, formerly embattled, constructed of flint pebbles; in the interior is a stone staircase, at present in a very ruinous state. The lower part is occupied as a dwelling-house. On the top of it, during the war with France, was placed a telegraph, communicating with Yarmouth and the Admiralty, but the telegraph has been taken down. In the upper part of the tower is a bell of about a ton weight, which has been appropriated to various uses; in times past, it was rung at four o'clock in the morning to call apprentices to their work, and at eight in the evening for them to leave off it was anciently used as a curfew, or couvrefeu bell; but it is not now used for either of those purposes, but merely as an alarm bell in case of fire, and in consequence is termed the fire bell. It is said that Roger de Norton 'caused a very large and deep-sounding (sonorosissima) bell to be made and hung up, to be struck every night at the time of curfew,' which probably was the bell alluded to. Upon it is the following inscription, in church text, and also a Roman cross, viz.:—
Ye Missi Celis Haben Nomen Gabrielis.
"The town clock is placed in this tower, and strikes upon the skirt of the above bell. The frame in which it was hung is extremely decayed," says the local guide-book, "and the iron-work attached to it much corroded by rust, but it has recently been restored." We may add that measures are now being taken for restoring the Clock Tower to its original state.
About half a mile south-east of the abbey, in the meadows near the Ver, stand the ruins of Sopwell, but they are so imperfect that the plan of the convent can hardly now be traced. The nuns who occupied it were Benedictinesses, and among its lady abbesses was Dame Juliana Berners, of whom we have already spoken. It is said that Sopwell was the scene of the private marriage of Anne Boleyn with Henry VIIL, who somewhat ungratefully bestowed the convent buildings on a courtier, Sir Richard Lee, from whom it passed eventually, after sundry changes, into the hands of the present Earl of Verulam.
A walk of half a mile along the banks of the Ver will conduct our visitor, by way of the boat-house already mentioned, to the ruins of Verulamium. Built as the city was on the old Watling Street which led from London to the north, it is not to be wondered at that, even in the desolation of their present ruined state, they bear on their fronts abundant testimony that they were erected at a date as early as the commencement of the Christian era, though any inquiry as to their locality addressed to the country people, is generally met by a vacant stare of wonder and ignorance, which shows that our English rural population is far less poetical than practical.
But alas, when we arrive at Verulamium, how shattered are all our previous bright imaginings! The red brick carcases of five small cottages and those huge masses of grey stone all overgrown with ivy, do these constitute all that remains of the once great Roman town? Did Caius, and Lucius, and Publius, and Marcus, and Quintus, inhabit these miserable hovels? The floors are overgrown with weeds, the walls are dilapidated and roofless, yet still it is somewhat strange to remember that the Romans, whom we know only in history, were actually living men and women when these walls were built, just the same as we who now look at them, after nearly two thousand years, are living men and women. And perhaps that archway in the long wall attracted the eyes of Julius Cæsar, in the same way that it now attracts the eyes of Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. It is almost needless to add that Roman coins and pieces of tesselated pavements have been found in Verulamium in great abundance, and that antiquaries have discovered in situ, close to St. Michael's Church, the entire outlines of a Roman amphitheatre. These remains were opened some few years since under the auspices of the St. Alban's Archæological Society, but, having lain open for a time, were filled in again. Perhaps the day will come when we shall see exhumed the ancient thermæ, and the floors of Roman mansions, as has been the case at Wroxeter; and let us hope that, if such a day should come, the necessary researches may be carried on with as much public spirit as success.
The view of the abbey from this point is not to be surpassed in grandeur. Messrs. Buckler, in their interesting work on the abbey,[1] write as follows:—
"We may view in imagination, from- ↑ A History of the Architecture of the Abbey Church of St Alban's." By I. C. Buckler and C. A. Buckler.
