High Quality Pergolas in St Albans
A gazebo or a pergola, but which one?
When the better weather arrives, our thoughts turn to spending some more quality time in the garden. Whether it’s just to relax after a hard day’s work, or having somewhere to host a social gathering with a barbecue, the garden is a great place, but sometimes we need some sort of shelter. But what sort of garden structure is best for you?
The most obvious consideration here is what your garden space is like, specifically how much sun your property is subjected to and for how much of the day.
Pergolas tend to be more suited to the moderate climate with moderate sunshine because they generally don’t offer complete shade, although you can improve the shade they offer by growing dense climbing plants up and over them. The other good thing about the pergola is that they are intended to stay up all year, whereas the gazebo is a more temporary structure, designed for the fairer weather.
Much like gazebos, pergolas are pretty durable because of their building materials. When properly looked after and maintained, they can last as long as hardtop gazebos. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that a roofless pergola is a right choice for an environment that has a good deal of snow throughout the year.
However, if you live in a very warm and sunny area and shade is your primary need and you want to regulate the temperature, a hardtop gazebo is great to help you to stay cool.
A pergola to offer shade and look amazing
A pergola roof does a fantastic job at promoting good airflow. They achieve this because they have a slatted roof and with the addition of climbing plants or even a natural looking bamboo screen fixed to the pergola, you can achieve a good deal of shade. When constructed and sited properly, a pergola can also regulate the temperature in your home and helps you to avoid the damage the sun can do to soft furnishings and other furnishings in your home.
Pergolas are far more flexible and offer more possibilities when it comes to natural coverage. As stated above, the pergola can have all manner of plants and vines trained to climb up and over them, also adding a welcome sanctuary to various birds that visit our gardens throughout the year.
Unlike the hardtop of a gazebo, the open roof beams of a pergola offer endless opportunities for plants to latch on, creating a beautiful and natural canopy.
A pergola really is a blank canvas for your own garden design. The pergola will also offer many ways to separate different parts of levels of your garden, adding depth and interest to your precious open space.
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St Alban: Man, Martyr and Saint
Saint Alban is remembered and venerated as the first-recorded British Christian martyr, for which reason he is considered to be the British protomartyr. A protomartyr is simply the very first person to become a martyr for a cause or religion. Along with fellow Saints Julius and Aaron, Alban is one of three named martyrs recorded at an early date from Roman Britain. He is traditionally believed to have been beheaded in Verulamium, now modern St Albans, sometime during the 3rd or 4th century,
The body of St Alban was probably buried outside the city walls in a Roman cemetery near the present cathedral. His hillside grave became a place of pilgrimage. Recent investigation has uncovered a basilica there, indicating the oldest continuous site of Christian worship in the whole of Great Britain. In 429 Germanus of Auxerre visited the church and subsequently promoted the cult of St Alban.
What is left of Roman St Albans?
There still remain some traces left of the Roman city of St Albans. Some parts of the city walls, a hypocaust central heating system, that is still in place under a mosaic floor, and the theatre, which is on land belonging to the Earl of Verulam, as well as items in the museum. Further remains beneath nearby agricultural land have only had a few exploratory trenches, which have never been fully excavated and were seriously threatened by deep ploughing, which ceased in 2005 after compensation was agreed. Test trenches in 2003 confirmed that serious damage had occurred to buildings on the northern side of Old Watling Street by deep ploughing. Permission needs to be granted to enable the full extent of the damage to the western half of Verulamium to be investigated.
Anglo-Saxon St Albans
After the Romans left Britain, St Albans became the centre of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon tribe, the Waeclingas.
St Albans Abbey and the Anglo-Saxon settlement were founded on the hill outside the Roman city where it was believed St Alban was buried. An archaeological excavation in 1978, failed to find Roman remains on the site of the medieval chapter house. As late as the eighth century the Saxon inhabitants of St Albans nearby were aware of their ancient neighbour.
The Medieval period in St Albans
The medieval town of St Albans grew on the hill to the east of Wæclingacaester where the Benedictine Abbey of St Albans was founded by Ulsinus in 793. There is evidence that the original site was higher up the hill than the present Abbey, for which the construction started in 1077. St Albans Abbey was the principal medieval abbey in England. The scribe Matthew Vickers lived there and it was here that the first draft of Magna Carta was drawn up according to some historians. It became a parish church after the dissolution of the Benedictine abbey in 1539 and was made a cathedral in 1877.