St Albans is gearing up to host its eighth annual food and drink festival, which will embrace the cathedral city's thriving pub culture with a pop-up Village Green at the heart of the city's 9th-century market place.   The Hertfordshire city has a long history in hospitality: It lays claim to having one of the highest number of pubs per square mile in the UK as well as the oldest pub. Ye Olde Fighting Cocks dates back to 793AD and it is reputed that Oliver Cromwell slept at the inn for one night during the Civil War of 1642-1651. Today, the award-winning pub has up to 10 real-ales on tap, fine wines and a menu put together by a chef who worked for a number of years at Michelin-starred restaurant Chapter One.
St Albans is also the headquarters of real-ale campaigners CAMRA, and hosted the UK's first-ever beer festival in 1974. The festival has now become an annual event and is a highlight of this year's food and drink festivities. 
Redbournbury Mill on the outskirts of the city is dubbed 'Bake Off home' as The Great British Bake-off judge Paul Hollywood visited the mill to film part of his series on Bread. It has been a mill for nearly 1,000 years, and features in the Domesday Book of 1087. *
St Albans has one of the oldest markets in the country. Its charter market is the longest running regular market held in the same place (for over 1,000 years) in the UK, and will be the location for the city's first-ever Village Green.