The church marks the site of the burial of the first Christian martyr in Britain. Alban, an inhabitant of Verulamium, was beheaded for his faith, probably in the second half of the third century. There is evidence that a church was built, outside the Roman city, soon afterwards, but no trace of it remains.

In 793 Offa, King of Mercia, founded or refounded a Benedictine monastery hereand erected a new church. The only surviving stones from that building are a few pillars above the south transept. The church was entirely rebuilt by Paul de Caen, the first Norman abbot, and the core of the building, including the Great Tower, date from his time. Paul re-used Roman bricks from the abandoned Verulamium, and they can still be seen, particularly from the outside of the building.
There were two major rebuildings in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries at the west end and on the south side of the nave, and additions and alterations to the east end. The Saint’s Chapel, behind the High Altar, contains the restored Shrine of St Alban, dating from 1302, on a site which has been a place of pilgrimage for nearly 1700 years. In the Nave and elsewhere is an unrivalled sequence of medieval wall paintings, ranging in date from the late twelfth to the sixteenth century. The Benedictine Abbey was one of the great medieval religious foundations, given the title of England’s Premier Abbey by Adrian IV (Nicholas Breakspeare, a local boy). Its mitred abbots had extensive powers and were exempt from episcopal jurisdiction. There were over 100 monks in the mid-fourteenth century, but only 38
by the time the Abbey was dissolved in December 1539. The extensive monastic buildings rapidly disappeared, and only the Great Gateway remains apart from the church. The church survived due to its purchase by the town from the Crown for £400 in 1550, for use as a parish church.

The Lady Chapel at the east end was soon turned into a school, and for the next three centuries the town struggled to maintain such an enormous building; it has the longest medieval nave in Europe.

By the nineteenth century there was urgent need for repair. The third restoration was undertaken by Sir George Gilbert Scott, and much of the work was overseen, and paid for, by Lord Grimthorpe. He is responsible for the remodelling of the West Front, and the ends of the transepts in particular.

The Chapter House was built in 1982, on the site of the medieval Chapter House. The Bishopric of St Albans was established in 1877. At the start the Cathedral had no Dean, but in 1900 the Rector was made Dean. The Cathedral continues to be a parish church as well. The current Constitution and Statutes came into force in 2000, establishing the Chapter as the administrative body, the Abbey assembly which oversees the parochial life, and an advisory Council with wide representation from the diocese and the community.

March 2006