Kingston Hill Place is a grand mansion, built in 1828 by Samuel Baxter of Regent Street, that is the centrepiece of a gated housing estate on Kingston Hill, KT2 7QY. Its first occupant was Robert Lawes Esquire. Thereafter a number of interesting people lived there, including Viscount Pollington and Bonar Law MP. was occupied by a number of interesting people before it became a convalescent home for members of the women’s services during WW2 and thereafter was a campus of Kingston Polytechnic until about 1991. An enigmatic granite obelisk in the grounds possibly may have been a silent memorial to one or more of the deceased members of the family of the first occupant, Robert Lawes Esquire. Research on a local tradition that the estate was used by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, for trysts with Lillie Langtry indicted that, if they did take place, they would have occurred between 1874-1879 during the tenancy of Robert Leonard Trollope, a rich, and probably well-connected property developer.
Audrey Giles’ new book evolved from the research of a family anecdote about a railway accident in 1904 in which her grandfather, George Spencer, was seriously injured.
The tombstone of Josiah Clues who died in 1842 was found in Memorial Gardens, Kingston upon Thames, KT1 1RP. Through merit alone, he rose from the ranks to be a Lieutenant in the British Army
Charles Lock Luck an architect, born in 1833 at the Paragon, Blackheath, lived in Surbiton from 1860-1890.
Seething Wells is an area in Surbiton, the “Seething Well” spring probably was on land surveyed for the Lambeth Water Company in 1848