On your right, look for a low timber-framed frontage with a sloping tiled roof and an overhanging upper storey, the whole place reading as two very old buildings quietly joined together.
The Boot carries itself like a pub with a long memory. Part of it may already have stood here on the twenty-second of May, fourteen fifty-five, when the First Battle of St Albans broke across these streets. That link matters enough that the Battlefields Trust treated it as a battlefield pub and presented landlord Will Hays with an interpretation panel in twenty thirteen. If you glance at the image on your phone, you can see that ancient frontage for yourself.
It has changed names as well as owners. Ghost lore remembers it as the Old Wellington, and earlier still the Blue Boar. In the mid eighteenth century, William Draper owned it and also seems to have leased both the Clock Tower and the Fleur de Lys, which gives this corner of St Albans a rather deliciously tangled family history.
Then the stories turn darker. Builders once found dried flowers hidden behind a wall; after that, people blamed strange electrical antics on whatever they had disturbed. Another tale tells of a soldier who spent the night upstairs with a woman, came down covered in blood, and left for Van Diemen’s Land, while her ghost stayed behind.
And yet The Boot endures: praised in the Good Beer Guide, named Best Pub in St Albans in twenty fifteen, and steered for two decades by Sean and Will Hughes. It is moderately priced and generally opens from noon, with slightly longer hours at the weekend.
The Boot feels like St Albans in miniature: battle, gossip, appetite, and a whisper of the uncanny. When you are ready, continue on toward the Town Hall.
