Sectional Garage Doors in St Albans

St Albans has some gorgeous properties and some have ample parking within the property boundaries. Unfortunately for may of the towns residents this is not the case.

The parking on the roads around St Albans has reached a point where many roads have become difficult for vehicles travelling in opposite directions to navigate. The reason for this in many towns is often that when the town was built, there were no cars and even when roads were modernised, there were very few cars per household.

For some properties, garages were added as an afterthought and the some of the newer properties had garages, but very small driveways. The result was that as the population and therefore car ownership grew, many people parked on the roads around the town.

Today many residents of St Albans are reclaiming their old garage space and using it for their cars rather than a dumping ground for old furniture or garden tools. As a direct consequence, ACE Garage Doors are spending a good deal of time fitting garage doors in and around the St Albans area, but which style do you choose? Below we have detailed some of the garage door styles available and described how they operate. Hopefully this will help you to decide which style garage door is best suited to your St Albans property.

Different styles of garage doors in St Albans

Roller shutter garage doors

ACE Garage Doors supply and fit easy roll insulated roller garage doors, Hormann Rollmatic garage doors, with the Hormann Duragrain finish. The choice is extensive and we think you will love them as much as we do.

Our roller shutter garage doors are a superb option for commercial premises as well as private dwellings. They are the ideal garage door where the ceiling space is needed for extra storage, this is because they only take up a very small area of the ceiling space and only at the very front of the garage too. This popular style of garage door is made with steel sections that roll around a drum above the door opening.

Our roller shutters are built to endure many years of usage and and can even have high performance units without springs and enclosed to prevent corrosion, and freezing when the weather turns cold. Our roller shutter garage doors are also very secure. This is why you will often see them used on industrial parks where high security is a must.

Sectional garage doors

With motorised units to assist with opening and closing at the touch of a button, sectional garage doors are a popular choice with our customers. They do not require any room at the front of the garage for them to open, unlike traditional canopy up and over garage doors.

Our sectional garage doors are manufactured with panel sections that are connected with hinges. As the door opens and closes, wheels at the edge of each panel roll inside a vertical track on each side of the door opening. They are like roller shutters, but with much larger slats, so they will not roll around a drum.

The hinges between each panel section move over a curved section of the track. This allows the door to sit level and close to the ceiling when completely open or in line with the walls when completely shut.

Sectional garage doors are usually made from steel, but can be made from other composite materials and are very low maintenance. They come in both insulated and non insulated versions, with the insulated ones being very popular with garages that are integral to the property.

Up and over canopy garage doors

These are without doubt the most common style of garage door. The up and over canopy garage doors do not have several sections, they are made of one solid piece of metal, with metal braces for strength. They can be made from durable composite materials too and may have decorative window inserts incorporated. Up and over canopy garage doors have a pivoting hinge mechanism, so they can tilt up into the garage roof space. The up and over style of garage door sits parallel to the garage ceiling and extends past the front of the garage when the door is opened, so the vehicle has to be parked at least a couple of feet away. The lock and handle is often set central, either in the middle or nearer the bottom of the door.

Side hinged garage doors

The barn door style of garage door that is often very popular with garages that are built separate to the main property. They are often made from good quality timber and are thus rather heavy. Because of the weight, they require stout hardware and good solid walls to support them.

Side hinged garage doors swing open and closed from a hinged frame on either side of the opening.

Side opening garage doors are particularly suited to garages with pitched and tiled roofs. They can now be automated with special conversion arms. Many of the older properties in St Albans have separate garages that would suit this style of garage door perfectly.

A little St Albans history

There was an Iron Age settlement known as Verulamium, Verlamion, or Verlamio, near the site of the present city, the centre of Tasciovanus power and a major centre of the Catuvellauni from about 20 BC until shortly after the Roman invasion of AD 43. The name Verulamium is Celtic, meaning settlement over or by the marsh. St Albans was on Prae Hill, a little way to the west of where St Albans is now. This is now covered by the village of St Michaels, Verulamium Park and the Gorhambury Estate. Although excavations done in 1996 produced finds which included silver coins from the Roman Republican era, evidence of trade and that a settlement already existed on the site fifty years before Julius Caesar attempted to invade Britain, yet it is believed that the tribal capital was moved to the site by Tasciovanus in around twenty five to five BC.

The Roman city of Verulamium, was the second largest town in Roman Britain after Londinium and it developed from the Celtic settlement and was granted the rank of municipium around AD 50, meaning that its citizens had what were known as Latin Rights, a lesser citizenship status than a colonia possessed. It grew to a significant town, and as such received the attentions of Boudica of the Iceni in 61, when Verulamium was sacked and burnt on her orders.

The body of St Alban the Martyr was probably buried outside the city walls in a Roman cemetery near the present cathedral. His hillside grave became a place of pilgrimage. Recent investigation has uncovered a basilica there, indicating the oldest continuous site of Christian worship in Great Britain. In 429 Germanus of Auxerre visited the church and subsequently promoted the cult of St Alban.

A few traces of the Roman city remain visible, such as parts of the city walls, a hypocaust underground heating system is still in situ under a mosaic floor, and the theatre, which is on land belonging to the Earl of Verulam, as well as items in the museum. Further remains beneath the nearby agricultural land have never been fully excavated and were seriously threatened by deep ploughing, which stopped in 2005 after compensation was agreed.

Anglo-Saxon St Albans

After the Roman left, St Albans became the centre of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon Waeclingas tribe.

St Albans Abbey and the associated Anglo-Saxon settlement were founded on the hill outside the Roman city where it was believed St Alban was buried. An archaeological excavation in 1978 failed to find Roman remains on the site of the medieval chapter house. As late as the eighth century the Saxon inhabitants of St Albans nearby were aware of their ancient neighbour, which they knew alternatively as Verulamacaestir, meaning the fortress of the followers of Waecla, possibly a pocket of British speakers remaining separate in an increasingly Saxonised area.

The medieval St Albans grew on the hill to the east of Waeclingacaester where the Benedictine Abbey of St Albans was founded by Ulsinus in 793. There is some evidence that the original site was higher up the hill than the present building, which was begun in 1077. St Albans Abbey was the principal medieval abbey in England. The scribe Matthew Vickers lived there and the first draft of Magna Carta was drawn up there. It became a parish church after the dissolution of the Benedictine abbey in 1539 and was made a cathedral in 1877.

St Albans School was founded in AD 948. Matthew Paris was educated there and it is the only school in the English speaking world to have educated someone who would become Pope Adrian IV. His real name was Nicholas Breakspear and a school was named in his honour. Now a public school it has, since 1871, occupied a site to the west of the Abbey and includes the 14th century Abbey Gateway. One of its buildings was a hat factory, a link with the citys industrial past.

On Abbey Mill Lane, the road between the Abbey and the school, are the palaces of the Bishops of St Albans and Hertford and Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, claimed to be the oldest pub in England.

Between 1403 and 1412 Thomas Wolvey was engaged to build a clock tower in the Market Place. It is the only extant medieval town belfry in England. The original bell, named for the Archangel Gabriel sounds F-natural and weighs one ton. Gabriel sounded at 4 am for the Angelus and at 8 or 9 pm for the curfew. The ground floor of the tower was a shop until the 20th century. The first and second floor rooms were designed as living chambers. The shop and the first floor were connected by a flight of spiral stairs. Another flight rises the whole height of the tower by 93 narrow steps and gave access to the living chamber, the clock and the bell without disturbing the tenant of the shop.

Two battles of the Wars of the Roses took place in or near the town. The First Battle of St Albans was fought on 22 May 1455 within the town, and the Second Battle of St Albans was fought on 17 February 1461, just a little to the north.

A street market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, founded by Abbot Ulsinus, is still held regularly.

St Albans today

Before the 20th century St Albans was a rural market town, a Christian pilgrimage site, and the first coaching stop of the route to and from London, accounting for its many old inns. Victorian St Albans was small and had little industry. Its population grew more slowly than London.

The railway arrived later than many other towns in 1858. In 1869 the extension of the city boundaries was opposed by the Earl of Verulam and many of the townsfolk, but there was rapid expansion and much building at the end of the century, and between 1891 and 1901 the population grew considerably.

In 1877, in response to a public petition, Queen Victoria issued the second royal charter, which granted city status to the borough and Cathedral status to the former Abbey Church. The new diocese was established in the same year, in the main from parts of the large Diocese of Rochester.

In tbetween the two world wars, St Albans became a centre for the electronics industry. In the post World War II years it expanded rapidly as part of the post war redistribution of population out of Greater London. It is now a popular tourist destination that has wonderful Christmas fayres and the Roman history remains a huge draw for tourists.

So if you need a new garage door and are still unsure of the style you would like or the type that is most suited to your property, call ACE Garage Doors for a free no obligation quote.