The ancient capital of Surrey, and coronation place for Saxon kings, hence ‘king’s town’. In 838 Kingston was chosen as the seat of the Great Council convened by King Egbert. The town’s long association with royalty continued in the tenth century with Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great, who was the first of seven Saxon kings to be crowned here. The Coronation Stone, the town’s most notable possession, stands by the twelfth century Clattern Bridge over the River Hogsmill, outside the more recent Guildhall. Kingston was an important royal manor by the time of Domesday Book, which declared that it had a church, five mills and three salmon fisheries – and the town symbol is three salmon. Kingston’s post-Norman significance owes much to its bridge, which for nearly a thousand years was the lowest Thames crossing point except for London Bridge. There has been a market in Kingston since at least the thirteenth century, and pottery, fishing, tanning and the wool trade were key industries throughout the Middle Ages. Kingston was a famous coaching town in the eighteenth century. Its transport links were improved when a stone bridge replaced its wooden predecessor in 1828 but civic resistance blocked the arrival of the railway until 1863, although Kingston-on-Railway opened at Surbiton in 1838. Kingston’s residential population leapt when private estates such as Richmond Park were added along Richmond Road in the 1930s. At the far end of that road, the pioneering Sopwith Aviation Company was succeeded by Hawker Engineering, which manufactured cars and motorcycles, as well as the aircraft for which it is best known. Kingston University now occupies the original Sopwith buildings in Canbury Park Road. Kingston has become the prime retail location for south-west London, yet retains one of the best medieval street plans outside the City.

This domino set of telephone boxes in the main shopping area is a sculpture by David Mach

Its flagship store, Bentall’s, opened in 1867 and was reconstructed at the end of the 1980s, when it met with competition from John Lewis. At the same time a transformation began with the construction of a relief road, which permitted the pedestrianisation of the town centre. The newest addition to the shopping and leisure facilities is the Rotunda mall. In 2004 the town centre enterprises set up a pioneering business improvement district in a bid to retain Kingston’s place among Britain’s top twenty shopping destinations.