15 Jan 2025
ITV’s popular quiz show, The Chase, recently featured a St Albans blue plaque in a question to contestants.
Host Bradley Walsh asked: “A blue plaque unveiled in 2022 in St Albans honoured the priest John Ball for his role in what historical event?”
a) War of the Roses
b) Magna Carta
c) Peasants’ Revolt
Both the contestant and The Chaser correctly answered c) Peasants’ Revolt.
The blue plaque is installed on the west side of the front of St Albans Museum + Gallery. After the failure of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, John Ball was brought to St Albans and tried on the site of the Museum +Gallery and sentenced to a grisly end. He was hanged, drawn and quartered. His head was put on a spike in London, his body was dismembered and the parts displayed in other towns in England – not exactly ‘the good old days’!
Generally denigrated by historical sources at the time and then forgotten, he was later to become ‘a hero of the people’ who had defied the class system of the English royalty and aristocrats and stood up for the commons.
His was the first blue plaque to be installed by the voluntary organisation, Blue Plaques St Albans, and was officially unveiled by the Mayor at that time, Cllr Edgar Hill. If you haven’t seen it, better go and have a look now it is ‘a TV star’!
Chair Tim Boatswain said: “It’s great that one of our St Albans blue plaques received national attention. Here’s hoping Frederick Sander’s blue plaque in George Street makes an appearance on University Challenge soon!”
