Chantry island

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Chantry Island is a small patch of land surrounded by a small dyke, giving the impression that is is an Island. It is located in the grounds of the All Saints Pastoral centre, part of the Archdiocese of Westminster, in London Colney, Hertfordshire.

Chantry Island is famous as being the arrest place of St Alban, the first Christian Martyr in the United Kingdom. St Alban had been recently converted by a priest. Chantry Island was, and is, heavily wooded, and provided an ideal location for clandestine meetings of local Christians, since should the local Roman Authorities appear, it provided much cover for those Christians to scatter and hide. On the occasion of his arrest, a group of Christians were meeting together, when word of the impending arrival of Roman Soldiers arrived. St Alban offered to swap clothes with the priest so that he, and not the priest would be arrested. St Alban was arrested, marched to nearby St Alban's, then called Verulamium, where he would later be martyred.

Chantry Island became a site of pilgrimage, and there exists to this day the remains of a chapel built on the site to commemorate St Alban's arrest.