Photographer creates book with images of St Albans’s 97 pubs

A photographer from St Albans has created a photo book of all 97 pubs in the city at night.

Ricky Barnett, 54, started taking photos of local pubs for fun, but when he received a positive response on Facebook made it his mission to photograph every pub in St Albans.

After turning the photos into a calendar, he then made them available to buy as prints and as a photo book, forming a record of the city’s pubs as they are today.

Ricky, who lives in Marshalswick, said: “I went out one night last year when I was at a loose end and I’d got a new camera, and started taking photos of different things.

“As I go to pubs I thought I’d take a few photos of pubs and I posted them on Facebook. I got a very good reaction so I took on the mission of taking a photo of every single pub in St Albans. It turned into 97 pubs.

“It was suggested that I should make a calendar, which I did, and just for my own interest I made a book. I offered it to everyone who may be interested and now I’m talking to CAMRA [Campaign for Real Ale] about the Beer Festival and maybe doing something there.”

Ricky works as a mechanical engineer, and has been pursuing photography seriously for around a year and a half. It took him six weeks to photograph all of the pubs, and he photographed them all at night, often with dramatic streaks of light.

He said: “My current favourite is the Robin Hood, but I have been frequenting St Albans a long time before I was living here.”

He also named the bar at the White Hart Hotel in Holywell Hill as among his favourites, and said that the landscape of St Albans pubs has changed over the years, with some having closed down.