Place Name
Kingston Hill Place was a mansion, built in 1828 by Samuel Baxter of Regent Street, that is the centrepiece of a gated housing estate on Kingston Hill. Its first occupant was Robert Bartholomew Lawes, the second son of Lord Wenlock, who had bought the house – then called Kingston Hall – and land at auction for £4,060. The name Kingston has had royal connections for more than a millennia. It first featured in an Anglo-Saxon charter of AD838 at the time of Egbert, king of Wessex, as Cyninges tun from the Old English words caning and tūn literally the king’s manor or estate. Certainly it was an important enough holding that between AD899 until AD982 with Ethelred II all kings were crowned here. Nothing had changed following the Norman Conquest and by the time of the Domesday Book of 1086 it was being called Chingestune by 1164 it was Kingeston. Despite these long-standing connections, it didn’t have a Royal Charter granted until King John in 1200. By 1321 it had become Kyneston super Tamisiam and in 1589 Kingestowne upon Thames. In 1927, King George V confirmed Kingston’s status as a Royal Borough and in 1965, Elizabeth ll granted another Royal Charter which entitles Kingston to continue to use the title Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames.
