For a hundred years a traveller's rest on the main road from
Sydney to the Hunter Valley, the village of St Albans offers
hospitality to those who come to enjoy the tranquility, sense
of history, and natural beauty of the Macdonald Valley and
Yengo National Park.
Lying within a two-hour radius of Sydney, Newcastle and the Central Coast,
the village and valley make a rewarding and readily accessible
destination for a day trip, a weekend stay, a stopover on
the way to or from the Hunter Valley.
The "town" of St Albans was officially gazetted
in 1841, on land which had previously been a stockyard and
bullock wharf at the head of navigation on the Macdonald River.
Built in that decade the Settlers
Arms Inn, a two-storey sandstone hotel, has been the hub of
the village for locals and travellers for 150 years.
The flood of 1889, which rose to the verandah eaves of the
Inn, led to the building in the 1890's of the sandstone courthouse
on the opposite hillside well above that level, contemporary
with the building of the simple sandstone church of Saint
Alban on the hill behind the Inn
