St Stephens, Hertfordshire
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| St Stephens | |
| Hertfordshire | |
|---|---|
 St Stephen's Church | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TL141060 |
| Location: | 51°44’29"N, 0°20’53"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | St Albans |
| Postcode: | AL1 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | St Albans |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
St Albans |
St Stephens is a village in Hertfordshire which has become a suburb of St Albans. It stands on the slopes of Holywell Hill, across the River Ver from St Albans town centre.
St Stephens is named after the delightful 10th century Church of St Stephen which stands at the top of St Stephen's Hill, at the junction of Watford Road, King Harry Lane and Watling Street.
As St Albans has swollen with modernity, the village has become a suburb of the city. It is served by St Albans Abbey railway station.
Churches
The parish of St Stephen with St Julian includes St Stephens and also Chiswell Green. It stretches down the hill both sides to the Ver and to the St Albans North Orbital Road. The Roman City of Verulamium is within the parish.
- St Stephen’s is a beautiful old parish church, founded in 948 A.D. The Anglo Saxon building was about 34 feet wide by 38 feet long, probably divided into two rooms and probably without a tower. Little remains of this building, but the small window, deep set in rough masonry, just by the door to the Parish Centre has been dated to around 950. The building today is largely mediæval, but it was sympathetically restored from a near ruinous condition in the 1860s. The spire, replacing a “Hertfordshire spike” on the tower, dates from this time. The pews and ornamental woodwork are Victorian.
- St Julian's is in Sopwell within the Cottonmill Estate. In contrast the austere appearance of many older churches, this has a friendly and modern space for worship. St Julian’s was founded in 1952 in a wartime Nissen hut which had served an anti-aircraft searchlight, but the development of the Cottonmill housing development in the 1950s required a new church, which was built in 1956, and was partly paid for by individual community subscriptions of 6d. The name is taken from the dedication of a former leper hospital which once stood near St Stephen’s.
