St Albans heroes should be celebrated in new museum
YOUNG sailing superstar Mike Perham, who has just completed a nine-month-long voyage around the world, is the latest in a list of notable people who have put St Albans on the map. And according to campaigners for a new museum in the city, the achievements
YOUNG sailing superstar Mike Perham, who has just completed a nine-month-long voyage around the world, is the latest in a list of notable people who have put St Albans on the map.
And according to campaigners for a new museum in the city, the achievements of the 18-year-old Oaklands College student and other luminaries should be highlighted in such a location.
A group of prominent local residents is campaigning for a new museum devoted to the parts of the history of the city which are not currently represented at the Museum of St Albans.
Forty names have been researched by one of their number, former Civic Society chairman George Atkinson.
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As well as Nicholas Breakspear, the first British Pope, Elizabethan statesman Francis Bacon and soldier John Churchill whose wife Sarah was the confidante of Queen Anne, there have been plenty of others.
They include writers Michael Morpurgo, Kate Allan, Willis Hall, Allan Prior and James Runcie, singers David Essex, Siobhan Fahey of Bananarama, Rod Argent and Paul Cattermole of S Club 7 and comedians Benny Hill, Garth Marenghi and John Sessions.
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Acting and TV presenting is represented by Cheryl Campbell, Philip Madoc and Nigel Marven while top film director and the man behind Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Mike Newell, used to live in the city and attended St Albans School.
Footballers Dean Austin, Les Ferdinand and Gilberto Silva either live or have lived in the city as have TV presenter Jimmy Hill and commentator John Motsom.
The city has also been home to film-maker Stanley Kubrick, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, former head of M15 Stephen Lander and the former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie.
The St Albans music scene is also represented with Enter Shikari, Friendly Fires and Saving Aimee while the lyricist Tim Rice was another former student of St Albans School.
The new museum campaign has been launched now as part of the Shaping Our Community consultation which ends on September 28.
