The old entrance by Holywell Hill is the most charming part of St. Albans, with fine old red-brick mansions and old inns where the coaches and the post-chaises used to come. Many of the inns are either mere shadows of their former selves, or have been entirely altered to other uses, but their coach-entrances and yards remain to toll of what they once were. There stands a building now a girls’ school, but once the “Old Crown,” and close by the “White Hart,” with “Saracen’s Head Yard” beyond, but the “Saracen’s Head” itself is now divided into shops. In a continuous line uphill were the “Angel,” “Horsehead,” “Dolphin,” “Seven Stars,” “Woolpack,” “Peahen,” and “Key”; which last house stood squarely on the site where the London road now enters the city. It was from the “Keyfield,” at the back of this house, that the Yorkists burst into the streets and fell upon the Lancastrians in the first Battle of St. Albans, 1455. Another long-vanished inn was the “Castle,” made famous by Shakespeare in a scene of Henry VI., where Richard Plantagenet kills the Duke of Somerset, in this fight:—

Somerset had been warned by a witch to “shun castles”:—

He could scarce have interpreted the prophecy in the crooked way it was verified.

Holywell Hill still echoes to the sound of the coach-horn, as the modern “Wonder,” with an extra pair of horses, dashes up from the hollow to the “Peahen.” The “Wonder,” however, does not journey to and from St. Albans by the Holyhead road. Leaving London from the Hotel Victoria, Northumberland Avenue, at 10.50 a.m., it follows somewhat the line of the Watling Street by Hendon, the “Welsh Harp,” Edgware, Great Stanmore, Bushey, and Watford; reaching its destination at 1.50, and setting out on the return journey at 3.45. The “Wonder” has run daily to and from St. Albans, sometimes through the winter as well as summer, since 1882; owned by that consistent amateur of coaching, Mr. P. J. Rumney, familiarly known down the road and at Brighton as “Dr. Ridge,” from his proprietorship of a certain world-famed “Food for Infants.” But, before the “Wonder” came upon the scene, the modern coaching revival had provided St. Albans with summer coaches from about 1872. The now famous “Old Times” began to run, November 4th, 1878, and continued to St. Albans until the following spring, when it was transferred to Virginia Water.

The “Peahen,” standing at the meeting of Holywell Hill and the London Road, has of late been rebuilt in a somewhat gorgeous and baronial style, but is the lineal descendant of a house of the same name in existence so far back as 1556. The name of the “Peahen” is thought to be unique.

Continuing the line of hostelries past the “Peahen” and the “Key,” into Chequer Street, there were the “Chequers,” the “Half Moon,” and the “Bell”; and in French Row the “Fleur-de-Lis,” and the “Old Christopher,” still remaining. The “Great Red Lion” in the market-place, has been rebuilt. Near it, in George Street, on the old road out of St. Albans, is the “George,” one of the pleasantest old places still left, with an old red-brick front and a picturesque courtyard. There was an inn on this site certainly as early as 1448, when it was mentioned as the “George upon the Hupe”—whatever that may mean. In those times it was a pilgrim’s inn, and had an oratory chapel. Nothing so interesting as that survives, but the old house has its features. The room to the right of the archway, used in old times, when a coach plied from the “George” to London and back every day, as a booking-office and waiting-room, remains in use as a parlour and rendezvous for the country-folk on market days, and all the summer the courtyard is like a bower with flowers and vines. Under the gable can be seen a spoil snatched from the destruction of old Holywell House in 1837—the decorative carving from the pediment, a work representing Ceres, surrounded with emblems of agriculture its products, and attended by Cupids and shameless creatures of that sort.

To and from the “George” went daily the “Favourite” London coach, until the first of the railways came in May 1858, and ran it off the road. William Seymour, who used to drive it, then descended to the position of driver of an omnibus plying between St. Albans and Hatfield, but even that humble occupation was soon swept away by railway extension. He then became landlord of the “King Harry” inn at St. Stephens, and died at last, May 30th, 1869, in the Marlborough almshouses, St. Albans. Two other coaches in those days plied between St. Albans and London, generally taking three and a half hours. One came and went from the “Woolpack,” and the other, the “Accommodation,” from the “Fleur-de-Lis,” French Row.

A particularly haughty and exclusive establishment was the “Verulam Arms.” No common fellow who travelled by public conveyances was encouraged there. Only the lordly travellers who came in their own family coaches, or posted, ever sheltered beneath that condescending roof. The house remains, on the right-hand of Telford’s new road leaving St. Albans, but had, as an hotel and posting-house, the shortest of careers. Built between 1827 and 1828, another ten years saw the coming of the railway. With that event vanished the trade of the “Verulam Arms.” The house was soon closed, and has for fifty years past been a private residence. It is an extremely plain and uncompromisingly formal building in pallid brick, within railings enclosing a semicircular drive. It is said that the Princess Victoria stayed here once. Some portions of the once extensive stable-yards and coach-houses remain, but the greater part of the grounds was taken, as long ago as 1848, as the site for a Roman Catholic Church, an unfortunate building discontinued and sold before completion, and finally purchased and finished as a Church of England place of worship, as it still remains, with the title of Christ Church. It would be difficult to find a more hideous building.

But a far higher antiquity than can be shown by any other house in St. Albans belongs to a little inn called the “Fighting Cocks,” standing by the river Ver, below the Abbey. Its origin goes back to early monastic days, when the lower part of this curious little octagonal building was a water-gate to the monastery, and known as St. Germain’s Gate. Here the monks kept their nets, using the upper part as a fortification. That embattled upper stage disappeared six hundred years ago, and in its place the upper storey of the inn is reared, in brick and timber, upon the stone substructure. The inn claims to be the oldest inhabited house in the kingdom, and exhibited until recently the inscription:—

Obviously, judging from that old sign, the distinction between an eight-sided and a round house was too subtle to be noticed. The “Rebuilt after the Flood” does not (seeing where the house stands, beside the river Ver) necessarily mean the Deluge.

The hanging sign has of late years become pictorial. On one side the Cocks are to be seen, a whirling mass of contention, and on the other the victor stands proudly over the prostrate body of the vanquished, and indulges in a triumphant crow.