Kingston upon Thames

in the grounds of the Guildhall]] The first surviving record of Kingston is from AD 838 as the site of a meeting between King Egbert of Wessex and Ceolnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury. Kingston lay on the boundary between the ancient kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, until in the early tenth century when King Æthelstan united both to create the kingdom of England. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, two tenth-century kings were consecrated in Kingston: Æthelstan (925), and Æthelred the Unready (978). There are certain other kings who are said to have been crowned there, but for whom the evidence (including the writings of Florence of Worcester and Ralph de Diceto) is less substantial: Edward…