Kingston upon Thames is one of the most historically significant towns in Surrey and one of the oldest royal towns in England. The coronation stone, a block of grey sandstone now displayed on a plinth outside the Guildhall, is associated with the crowning of seven Anglo-Saxon kings: Athelstan (925), Edmund I (939), Eadred (946), Eadwig (955), Edgar (959), Edward the Martyr (975), and Ethelred the Unready (978). The stone was originally sited near the chapel of St Mary, which stood close to the present Clattern Bridge. While some historians question whether all seven coronations took place in Kingston, the town's importance in the Saxon period is well documented.
Kingston Bridge has been a crossing point on the Thames since at least the medieval period, and possibly longer. It was for centuries the first bridge upstream from London Bridge, giving Kingston strategic and commercial significance. The market, granted by charter, has operated continuously since at least the 13th century, and the market square remains the heart of the town. The All Saints Church, on the market place, has origins predating the Norman Conquest, though the current building is largely medieval and later.
Eadweard Muybridge, the pioneering photographer whose sequential motion studies laid the groundwork for cinema, was born Edward James Muggeridge in Kingston in 1830. His experiments at Stanford University in California, capturing a galloping horse in a series of photographs, proved that all four hooves leave the ground simultaneously and opened the way for moving pictures. The town received its Royal Borough status and has maintained its market tradition and riverside identity through centuries of growth. The Rose Theatre, opened in 2008, has brought a strong arts programme to the town centre. Kingston is more urban than most of the areas featured in this guide, but the river, the parks, and the proximity to Richmond Park and Bushy Park mean that green space is never far away.