Wedding Photographer St Albans — Roman Verulamium, the Norman Cathedral and the Ver Valley
St Albans is Hertfordshire’s Roman and medieval city — the site of Roman Verulamium (one of the largest Roman cities in Britain, third in size after London and Colchester), whose remains include the city walls, the Roman Theatre (the only visible Roman theatre in England), the painted hypocaust floors of the Verulamium Museum and the Via Watling Street’s alignment visible in the modern town plan. The Norman Cathedral — begun by Abbot Paul of Caen c.1077, with the longest nave in England (85 metres) and the most extensive use of Roman brick in any English medieval building (the Roman bricks of Verulamium reused in the Norman nave arcade) — provides a wedding ceremony setting of quite extraordinary historical depth. For St Albans wedding photography, the combination of Roman parks, Norman flint cathedral and the Ver valley’s chalk stream provides a portrait day of layered English historical character.
Verulamium Park, the Roman Theatre and the Roman Walls
Verulamium Park — the 100-acre municipal park enclosing the principal surviving Roman earthworks of the city walls, the hypocaust foundations and the medieval pond in the former Roman city’s street plan — provides a portrait setting of Roman urban archaeology of considerable visible scale: the Roman city wall’s surviving earthwork ramparts, the London Gate’s arch foundations and the visible Roman street plan provide a specific Roman town portrait landscape of English archaeological character. The Roman Theatre of Verulamium — the only visible free-standing Roman theatre in Britain, with the theatre’s cavea earthwork, the stage building’s foundations and the flint masonry of the theatre wall visible above the grass — provides a unique portrait setting of Roman theatrical archaeology. The Verulamium Museum’s painted Roman plaster and mosaic floors are adjacent.
The Norman Cathedral, Gorhambury and the Ver Valley
St Albans Cathedral — the Norman abbey church converted to cathedral status in 1877, whose extraordinary Roman-brick Norman tower and nave arcade represent the most concentrated use of Roman spolia (reused materials) in any English medieval building — provides a ceremony and portrait setting of Norman and Roman combined material culture of unique English ecclesiastical character. Gorhambury House — the eighteenth-century Palladian house of the Grimston family in the parkland immediately north of the town, with the ruins of the earlier Gorhambury of Sir Francis Bacon visible in the park — provides a country house portrait setting of considerable London-periphery estate character. The Ver’s chalk stream south of the city provides waterside meadow portrait settings.