Monuments & Ruins

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The Coronation Stone

A block of sarsen outside Kingston's Guildhall on which, the town holds, seven Saxon kings were made king, Æthelstan among them.

MedievalFree

Photo by Jmonica, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Æthelstan was consecrated king at Kingston in 925, Eadred in 946 and Æthelred the Unready in 979, and there is some evidence for four more, Edward the Elder, Edmund, Eadwig and Edward the Martyr, which would make it the crowning place of the English kings for most of a century. The stone itself is a lump of sarsen recovered from the ruins of the chapel of St Mary when it collapsed in 1730, taken thereafter to have been the stone they were crowned on; it did duty as a mounting block for a while, and in 1850 the town set it on a plinth in the market place with the names of the seven kings cut round it and a silver penny of each reign let into the stone. It moved to the front of the Guildhall in 1935 and has stood there, railed and unregarded, ever since, a few yards from the market where Æthelstan, by one account, was crowned on a stage.

Where
High Street, Kingston upon Thames, KT1 1EU
Nearest station
Kingston · 8 min walk

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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