By August 2006, eight months after new laws came into effect, nearly 30 same-sex civil partnerships had taken place in St Albans.

Nick Brooke, registration officer at St Albans Register office, said in the August 24, 2006, edition of the Herts Ad, that, “It has been extremely popular and very successful.

“People walk in all the time to inquire about a civil partnership and here in St Albans, our offices are very attractive.”

The last remaining in-patient ward at Harpenden’s Memorial Hospital, known as the Red House, had been reprieved.

Health chiefs were expected to decide whether to close the ward and transfer some of its beds to St Albans City Hospital as part of a cash-saving strategy.

And there was alarm in London Colney when families were evacuated to Sainsbury’s after the discovery of an unexploded shell, dating back to either the First or Second World Wars.

The army bomb disposal unit needed six attempts to blow up the 600mm long shell, found by a digger driver on a building site at the Arsenal training ground.