On your right, look for a black-and-white timber-framed frontage with a slightly jettied upper storey and a steep tiled roof: that crooked, joined-together profile is The Boot.
There is something wonderfully stubborn about this pub. Part of it, local historians say, already stood here when the First Battle of St Albans broke out nearby on the twenty-second of May, fourteen fifty-five. In other words, this was no bystander to history. A quick look at the photo shows that ancient street face clearly.
The building seems to be two older houses stitched into one, and Historic England lists it at grade two for its special interest. 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 held this pub and also leased both the Clock Tower and the Fleur de Lys, which gives you a lovely sense of how tightly St Albans property and drink trade once intertwined.
Then the stories turn darker. One tale says builders found dried flowers sealed behind a wall; after that, machines inside supposedly switched themselves on and off. Another claims a soldier took a prostitute upstairs, came down the next morning covered in blood, and the woman never left in spirit.
Yet The Boot never stayed merely notorious. It found literary fame in William Austen’s poem of St Albans inns, won Best Pub in St Albans in twenty fifteen, and under Sean and Will Hughes even reinvented its kitchen as Boot Cantina. It is a moderately priced place, usually open from noon, with later closing on Fridays and Saturdays.
A pub like this does not simply survive; it accumulates. Finally, head on towards The Cock.
