22 Jul 2025
Mike Neighbour, author of St Albans’ Own East End, looks at the truth behind the origins of the recently-renamed Rats’ Castle pub…
I was delighted to hear of the re-opening of Fleetville’s Rats’ Castle pub under a new name: the Old Toll House. Many of us have attempted to re-tell its story, in so doing becoming confused on the detail and therefore missing part of the location’s fascination – at the junction of Hatfield Road and Sutton Road, the former a poorly surfaced turnpike road and the latter what might be described at a private avoiding track.
To evade payment of a toll when leaving the city at The Peacock in Hatfield Road, when travelling eastwards along the Hatfield road, an unknown number of regular users took to making the journey via Sweet Briar and Camp Lanes, joining the turnpike along a private track (now Sutton Road) belonging to Beaumonts Farm.
A trustee of the Turnpike Trust eventually agreed to legitimise the diversion by building a small and simple house by the trackside on the corner of one of his fields to collect payments as cart drivers found their way towards the turnpike road.
Rodents had found the thatched roof attractive even as the little house was still being occupied in the late 1870s, by which time locals were already using the sobriquet the Rats’ Castle and the ground on which it had been built Rats’ Castle Field. Even the 1891 census described the location the Rats’ Castle.
Around 1897 the thatched building was torn down and replaced by a house and shop known as Primrose Cottage, and it was not until c1926 that the corner site changed again with Benskins’ purpose-designed public house named the Rats’ Castle designed by St Albans’ architect Percival Blow.
The present structure never was a toll house, let alone used for collecting payments from Hatfield Road traffic, but it shows how informal labels are often acquired and then take on a life of their own.
Incidentally, an attempt was made to shorten the pub’s name in the 1980s to The Castle. Following a local outcry (or at least much disagreement) the original name was restored within months. However, the building now loses the accolade of trading under a unique title. Perhaps today’s rename will become more permanent. We wish the Old Toll House much social and trading success.
See the story of the location at www.stalbansowneastend.org.uk/topic-selection/rats-castle/
