248 
ST. ALBANS AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
The site of the north gate is lost, and the line of this road 
north-eastward can only he conjectured. 
It is not known how Yerulam fell, but from the evidence of 
excavations it was deserted and became a quarry for the 
builders of St. Alban’s Abbey and town. Coins found on the 
site point to its having been inhabited up to the sixth century, v 
but it appears from Hildas, who wrote in the middle of that 
century, that the site was then desblate. 
Some time after the fall of Yerulam a settlement was 
established at Kingsbury on the north side of the River Yer. 
The earthworks of this town can be seen much mutilated in 
New England Fields and in the gardens on the other side of 
Mount Pleasant, on the north side of Eishpool Street, on the 
east side of Branch Road, and on the south side of the 
Yerulam Road. Only one entrance can be traced, which was 
at the point where Mount Pleasant enters the earthworks. 
At the south-east angle is a projecting bulwark causing the 
bend in Fishpool Street. 
Kingsbury was a royal borough and a fortified town probably 
of some importance, a council it is said having been held here 
in the ninth century. It was also an administrative centre 
where as we learn from the ‘G-esta Abbatum’ the King’s officers 
were maintained for keeping the peace of the district. 
St. Alban’s Abbey was founded in 793 by Offa II, King of 
the Mercians, in atonement, it is reported, for the murder of 
Ethelbert, King of the East Saxons, a suitor for the hand of his 
daughter Elfleda. The little church, built by British converts 
on the site of the martyrdom, was restored and may have been 
incorporated in the Saxon monastic church then built. The 
only relics of the Saxon church now remaining are some of the 
baluster shafts in the triforium of the north and south transepts 
of the Abbey. Off a and his son Egfrith granted a rich endow¬ 
ment to the monastery, including nearly all the south-western 
part of the country. This district was' apparently forest waste 
which the monks gradually cleared, colonised, and divided into 
parishes. 
Abbot Wulsin about 950 laid out the present market-place at 
St. Albans, which then extended from what is now the High 
Street to St. Peter’s Church and from the west side of French 
Row to the east side of Chequer Street. The Town Hall and 
the buildings southward, and also the east side of French Row, 
are encroachments of an early date. The Abbot cut up the land 
fronting the market-place into plots which extended back to the 
borough boundary, and encouraged people to settle here by 
assisting them with money and building materials. The town 
was probably at this time bounded and possibly defended by 
a ditch called Tonman’s Dyke which certainly existed in the 
time of King Stephen some two hundred years later, and 
remains in places to this day. St. Albans thus gives us the 
plan of a Saxon market-town. It was laid out on the north of 
