Borough in London, England
Kingston upon Thames
Seven Saxon kings were reputedly crowned here, a pioneering photographer proved horses fly, and Hurricanes were built just up the road.
Key information
- County
- Greater London (historically Surrey)
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 168,000, 2021 Census
- Known for
- Saxon coronations, the Coronation Stone, Hawker aircraft, Eadweard Muybridge, Kingston Market
- What locals are called
- Kingstonians
- Famous people
- Eadweard Muybridge, John Galsworthy, Harry Hawker
- Football clubs
- Kingstonian
About Kingston upon Thames
The town that crowned kings (and has the stone to prove it)
Find a chunky lump of sarsen stone on a plinth, ringed by the names of Saxon kings, and you've found the Coronation Stone. Tradition says it's where seven Anglo-Saxon monarchs were crowned between 900 and 978, including Athelstan in 925, often called the first king of all England. Ethelred the Unready is on the list too. The name does the heavy lifting. Kingston is the "king's estate", a royal manor beside a handy crossing point on the Thames. The stone spent centuries as a mounting block outside the old chapel before being set on its commemorative plinth in 1850. It was moved to the Guildhall grounds in 1935, and in 2025 it was relocated again, to All Saints Churchyard.
Why a bridge made Kingston rich
For centuries Kingston Bridge was the only bridge over the Thames between London Bridge and Staines Bridge. That meant traffic, trade and tolls. It wasn't until Putney got a bridge in 1729 that Kingston's monopoly on that stretch ended. Markets followed the traffic, and Kingston's is still a proper one, spilling around the cobbled Market Place beneath the old market house. Tucked away is Clattern Bridge over the Hogsmill, the oldest bridge in the borough, with medieval stonework still holding up the modern road. Jerome K. Jerome knew the place too: in Three Men in a Boat, the trio's boating journey begins at Kingston.
Where the Hurricane learnt to fly
In 1912 Thomas Sopwith set up an aircraft company in a former roller-skating rink in Kingston. The company turned out the Sopwith Camel, the First World War fighter, and later became Hawker, named for the Australian test pilot Harry Hawker, who died in a crash in 1921. The firm's drawing office on Canbury Park Road produced the Hawker Hurricane, designed by Sydney Camm. The Hurricane shot down more enemy aircraft than any other British fighter in the Battle of Britain. The factory sites have since been redeveloped, but Kingston's name remains tied to British aviation. The borough also has a theme-park legacy. Chessington World of Adventures began life as a zoo in the 1930s and still sits at the southern end.
The man who made horses gallop on film
Eadweard Muybridge was born in Kingston in 1830 and went on to change how we see movement. In California in the 1870s he used rows of cameras with trip wires to photograph a horse at full stretch, settling the old argument about whether all four hooves leave the ground at once. They do. He came home in later life and died in Kingston in 1904. Kingston Museum holds a Muybridge collection and tells his story. Another local was John Galsworthy, author of The Forsyte Saga and a Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1932. He was born at Kingston Hill in 1867.
Football in the streets, rowing on the river
Kingston's Shrove Tuesday football was a medieval free-for-all played through the town's streets, with the market place as its battleground. It carried on into the 19th century, long before the Football Association and its rule book. Today the football is tidier. Kingstonian, founded in 1885, are the town's club. The river is the other big pull: Kingston Rowing Club dates from 1858, and the towpaths are busy with sculls, paddleboards and walkers. Surbiton, in the borough, has a strong hockey reputation, and was the suburban setting for the sitcom The Good Life.
Little Seoul and student town
New Malden, on the eastern side of the borough, is home to one of the largest Korean communities in Europe. High Street restaurants serve up barbecue, kimchi stews and fried chicken, and Korean supermarkets stock shelves most of Britain has never seen. Kingston University adds a youthful crowd to the town's bars and shops, and the Rotunda complex stands opposite Kingston railway station, near the junction of Clarence Street and Cromwell Road. The result is a town that has stayed a market town at heart, with a very old crown still on its coat of arms.