St Albans was from 1894 to 1974 a rural district in the administrative county of Hertfordshire, England. The district was formed by the Local Government Act 1894 from the area of the existing St Albans rural sanitary district. An elected rural district council replaced the rural sanitary authority which had consisted of the poor law guardians of the area. The rural district comprised an area surrounding the Borough of St Albans, but did not include the city, which was an independent municipal borough.