When Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great, was deciding where to get crowned in 902 AD he followed the example of Egbert and spurned the obvious choice of his capital Winchester and chose instead Kingston - and probably for similar  reasons.   Kingston’s ford made it an accessible place to meet; and the increasing threat from the Danes made an alliance with the Angles of Mercia ever more urgent.  Perhaps Kingston offered more scope for diplomacy in what we would now call the margins than Winchester.  This coronation too would almost certainly have taken place in the church.

It would be a lie to call Edward’s reign a peaceful one: but in the course of it he succeeded, by combining the force of arms with diplomacy, to unite the Kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia and in 920 AD he was also recognised as overlord by the Kings of the North at Bakewell.  He therefore has a strong claim to be called the first King of England, although some reserve the title for his son.

When Edward died in 924 AD he was succeeded by his son Athelstan, who was also crowned at Kingston, in much splendour, on 4 September 925 AD.   Athelstan not only consolidated the rule of the House of Wessex, he also concluded a treaty with the Danes at Tamworth.  Following the death of the Danish leader Sithric, King of York (by now married to one of Athelstan’s sisters), Athelstan seized control of Northumbria and was now in control of a kingdom roughly the size of modern England.

Edmund (sometimes known as Edmund the Magnificent) was the brother of Athelstan and had fought beside him at the decisive battle of Brunanbrugh (a battle which was commemorated in an epic poem in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, later translated by Tennyson).   After succeeding his brother he too found himself fighting the Danes (who had again seized York).  For a time the kingdom was divided, but eventually Edmund reunited it, and also installed a friendly king (Malcolm I) on the throne of Scotland.

Edmund was murdered in 946 AD and was succeeded by his brother Edred.   Although his reign was marked by rebellion in the north, he helped to advance monastic reforms through his advancement of St Aethelwold and St Dunstan.  Edred died unmarried, after years of illness, in 955 AD and was succeeded by Edwig (so handsome he was dubbed Edwig All-Fair), the son of Edmund and his first wife St Aelfgith.  Sadly Edwig’s judgment and character did not match his looks, and he was a despotic ruler, ultimately dying in suspicious circumstances in 959 AD to be replaced by his brother Edgar the Peacemaker, who had earlier been made king of the northern parts of the kingdom.   (Although it has been speculated that Edgar was crowned at Kingston early in his reign, the only record that survives is of a coronation at Bath 973 AD.)   Edgar died in 975 AD and was succeeded, after some dispute, by his son Edward the Martyr.   But Edward’s reign was short-lived: his stepmother Aethelfrith had wanted the throne for her own son, Aethelred, and arranged for him to be killed - in rather grisly fashion - at Corfe Castle in 978 AD.  Even then, there was a year of in-fighting before Aethelred - Aethelred the Unready as he is universally known - came to the throne, and became the last king to be crowned at Kingston.  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 979 AD records the occasion:

In this year was Aethelred consecrated King, on the Sunday fortnight after Easter, at Kingston.  And there were at his consecration, two archbishops and ten diocesan bishops.

Aethelred’s nickname has been variously interpreted as meaning “ill-advised” and “under-resourced”; whichever it was, he was unable to prevent the increasingly bold longship assaults of the Vikings.  In 1009 they sailed up the river as far as Staines; it was probably then that Kingston Church was destroyed and replaced by one dedicated to St Mary.