[6] Among its famous alumni are Pope Adrian IV, Colin Renfrew, Jack Goody, Stephen Hawking, and Ian Grant.

This dates back to the family of the 12th century Geoffrey de Gorham (Master and subsequently Abbot of St Albans), deriving from Cicero's ("Non nobis solum nati sumus"; "We are not born for ourselves alone"), and was used until the Reformation.

Non nobis nati replaced the previous motto Mediocria firma ("The middle road is best"), used between the 16th and 20th centuries.

[7] By the 12th century, the School had built for itself such a reputation that the famous Norman scholars Geoffrey de Gorham and Alexander Neckam applied for the post of Master.

By the 15th century, the school was located in buildings in Romeland and inside the Abbey Gateway, which from 1479 housed schoolmaster's press.

[11] After the dissolution of the abbey in 1539, Richard Boreman, the last abbot, became Headmaster and the school moved to a chapel near St Peter's church in St Albans after its buildings in Romeland were demolished by Sir Richard Lee for building materials to rebuild Sopwell Priory into a country house.

[12] Around 1545, the school outgrew its St Peter's church premises and moved again to the Lady Chapel at the east end of the abbey, bought for the huge sum of £100, and it was separated from the rest of the abbey with a wall made of smashed stones from the ancient shrine of St Alban.

[12] In 1570 Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and father of Sir Francis Bacon, then living at nearby Gorhambury, gave the school new statutes and re-endowed the school by successful petitioning Queen Elizabeth I for a wine charter (extended by King James I in 1606).

[14] Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Nicholas Bacon also founded the school's library in 1570, which moved from Sumpter Yard in the 19th century to the Abbey Gateway, and then in the 1980s to an impressive converted 19th century neo-Gothic hall, opened by Colin Renfrew, then Master of Jesus College, Cambridge.

[15] Other significant benefactions to the school include a gift of clay pits near St Albans made in 1582[14] and a significant amount of land by Charles Woollam, an Old Albanian, in the 19th century, including playing fields at Belmont Hill and St Alban's "Holy Well", which was a site for medieval pilgrimage.

Since the 19th century, there have been many additions to the school site, which now comprises a very interesting architectural mixture of buildings dating from the Roman-era cellar, where the archives are kept under the Abbey Gateway, to modern extensions built in the 1990s.

[24] At over 100 acres, it was the largest sporting development in Western Europe until the construction of the Olympic Park in East London for the 2012 games.

Services are held there every Monday and Friday morning during term time, and special events held there include the annual Founders' Day and two carol services, led by the school choir, who still wear black and blue gowns in the same style as worn by undergraduates at Trinity College, Cambridge and similar to those worn by monks at the Abbey in medieval times.

Since the advent of modern science, the school has produced many famous scientists and mathematicians including cognitive scientist Colin Cherry, physicist Ian Grant, cosmologist Stephen Hawking (inspired by Dikran Tahta, a teacher at the school who later worked at the Open University), and mathematician Christopher Budd.

In the light of its long scientific heritage, the school was awarded a large sum of money in 2007 by the Wolfson Foundation to rebuild its physics laboratories to university standards.

Academic departments use Pen Arthur for field trips and study weekends throughout the year, and it is a base for outdoor activities organised by the Combined Cadet Force and for The Duke of Edinburgh's Award.