20 Nov 2025
We ask a different figure from the local community to choose 10 questions to answer from a list of 50. This week: David Thorold, the curator of the new exhibition at St Albans Museum + Gallery, Inns & Alehouses in Victorian St Albans which invites people to step back in time to the late 19th century when the city was home to nearly one hundred commercial drinking establishments.
Where do you most like to have a picnic in St Albans?
Verulamium Park. You can eat where once stood Roman temples, townhouses and markets. Always interesting to sit and think about the people who were here so long ago. Handy modern parking too (and you can pop to the museum).
CD, vinyl, download or streaming?
As an archaeologist I have to go for old school vinyl. Frankly, I’m disappointed that the wax cylinder went out of fashion.
How often do you check your phone?
I usually have to check if I’ve even got my phone – never quite got into the habit of carrying one. Seems to save me a lot of time from social media.
What was your first job?
Tour guide and excavator at Flag Fen bronze age site. I hit my career path early on!
Odyssey or Netflix?
The Odyssey is on the site of St Albans’ first cinema, the Alpha, which opened back in 1908, ran by the early film pioneer Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, so I’d go for that. It has a more interesting selection of films than Netflix too, plus they provide table service!
If you could have a conversation with someone who had died who would it be?
There’s a tombstone at South Shields of a Roman woman called Regina. She was a member of the local Hertfordshire tribe the Catuvellauni and it seems she was a slave who was bought by a merchant who freed her then married her and the two went into business on Hadrian’s Wall. That amount of social change from slave to successful merchant would be a story to hear, as well as what she thought of life around Hadrian’s Wall. The merchant who married her was from Palmyra, which is part of modern Syria, so I expect his thoughts on living in rainy Britain would also be interesting!
What’s your favourite St Albans pub?
The Lower Red Lion seems to have started as a common alehouse but if you look at the driveway entrance from the back yard and beer garden you can see that it’s been punched through the wall of what used to be the neighbouring house, so it looks like they added a coach entrance so they could attract some of the passing trade. Of course, my interest is purely professional…
What is your most-missed St Albans shop, pub, café or restaurant?
I’ve been working on an exhibition about Victorian pubs in St Albans. There used to be a grand courtyard inn on the corner of George Street and Vine Street called the Antelope, which began as a pilgrim house for visitors to the Abbey back in 1235. The gradual decline of the coaching trade through St Albans seems to have killed off its business and it was demolished in the 1840s but that would have been a building to see (there’s a drawing that showed it looked rather like the George in Southwark).
How long would you survive a zombie apocalypse?
The plan is in place, that’s all I’m saying.
Most inspirational St Albans person – living or dead?
Stanley Kubrick moved to Childwickbury in the 1960s. His run of films from Spartacus until Eyes Wide Shut are remarkable. He’d spend years preparing a project, researching and rewriting scripts and made a definitive version of pretty much every genre before moving on to another. Barry Lyndon, his 1975 historical drama is probably his least well known, but I doubt there will ever be a film that feels more historically authentic.
