Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames - History

History

Kingston upon Thames, on the south bank of the River Thames has existed for many hundreds of years. Many Roman relics have been found in the surrounding areas. A church has stood on the site of All Saints Church, in the centre of Kingston, for more than a thousand years. An earlier church was sacked by the Vikings in 1009AD. Kingston was the site of the coronations of seven Anglo-Saxon monarchs:

  • Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great), 900AD
  • Athelstan, 925AD
  • Edmund I, 939AD
  • Eadred, 946AD
  • Eadwig, 956AD
  • Edward the Martyr, 975AD
  • Ethelred the Unready, 979AD

The Coronation Stone, on which they are said to have been crowned stands outside the local council offices, the Guildhall. A coin from the reign of each of those kings is set into the base of the stone.

The borough was formed in 1965 by the merger and the transfer from Surrey to Greater London of the Municipal boroughs of Kingston-upon-Thames (which itself was a Royal Borough), Malden and Coombe and Surbiton.

The current name of the borough omits hyphens to distinguish it from the similarly named former municipal borough.

Kingston, administratively part of Greater London, contains County Hall, the seat of Surrey County Council, and except for the Kingston Vale area in the north-east which has a London SW15 postcode, was part of Surrey for postal purposes until postal counties were abolished in 1996.

Read more about this topic:  Royal Borough Of Kingston Upon Thames

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.
    Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)

    Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.
    Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)