St Albans is a wonderful place to live....if you're rich. It's full of bankers and footballers. However, its saving grace is its wonderful culture - from Roman ruins to the fab music scene it has something for everyone even footballers and bankers.
Yes there's more to Snorbens than the train line to london run by First C*nts Connect - incidentally FCC's first move once taking over ownership of the Station from Thameslink was to install charging cash machines...says it all really and sums up the current vibe in our once wonderful city.
Still they can't take away our history and heritage..er well yes they can - remember the Mile House being demolished to make yet more poncy flats for poncy gets. Anyway, I digress as usual I wanted to share with you some secret arcane knowledge hidden away at the bottom of our park.
There is a church at the bottom of Verulamium park called St Michaels which gave it's name to the St Michaels part of St Albans. I noticed this odd symbol of the St David's cross in one of the church windows. As you may be aware the St David's cross is a sign of the Jewish faith and seems a little out of place in a Christian church. Except, this is no ordinary church it once was part of the Gorhambury Estate and home to lots of Baron dudes including the one and only Sir Francis Bacon who was a famous late 16th Century early 17th Century statesman, philosopher, scientist and general all round show off chap who died whilst inventing frozen chicken (look it up it's true). Inside the church there is a monument to him but it is the weird window that grabs the attention of my Fortean mind. Bacon was also Lord Chancellor of the country for a while and served under fellow smart alec King James 1st of England.
However, not many people know of his secret dark side where he was alleged to be a member of the uber secret society of the times - The Rosicrucians. Indeed one of their symbols that they used was the star of David which they used to imply their secret knowledge handed down by Kabbalists in the Jewish Mystery schools. It is still going today and has quite a following in the United States - see link below;
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cross-purposes-who-are-the-rosicrucians-1767848.html
Some authors including the mad but bad author of The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - see the Rosicrucians as an important link from The Knights Templars to modern day Freemasonry. Francis Bacon also wrote a philosophical treatise called New Atlantis in which a utopian society was ruled by.......you guessed it the Rosicrucians. In some ways Bacon was way ahead of his time. In New Atlantis he advocated greater rights for women and the abolition of slavery. However, some researchers have found a more seedy side to him which suggested he was a "pederast" in the fact that he preferred the company of young boys. This side of him is also kept quite hidden and I find it a bit scary and weird that there is a school named after him in St Albans.
Some writers have also linked Bacon to the mystery of Oak Island where the so called "Money Pit" is said to contain magical treasure such as the Ark Of The Covenant or The Holy Grail. Many 100's of people - treasure hunters, explorers and celebrities including Clark Gable have tried in vain to find this treasure. Some have put forward the theory that Bacon buried evidence in the Money Pit which proved to the world that he was the writer of the plays attributed to the great William Shakespeare. The trouble is the Money Pit has been highly booby trapped with an elaborate flooding system which has meant that it has been impossible to find the "treasure" at the bottom.
http://www.oakislandtreasure.co.uk/content/section/5/35/
So there you go another little example of the weird and wonderful which can be found amongst the blocks of toytown yuppie flats and overpriced restaurants.
