15 and 16 Market Place, Kingston upon Thames

The building at 15 and 16 Market Place, Kingston upon Thames, is a shop constructed in 1909 for Boots the Chemists, with an extension added in 1929. The sculptures are likely the work of Gilbert Searle & Son.

The building is primarily brick and timber frame, with a stucco façade featuring applied timber framing, stone dressings, and statuary, all topped with plain tile roofs. It comprises a purpose-built shop in three gabled bays and four storeys. Originally, the shop occupied the central and left-hand bays, presenting a symmetrical front with a central entrance. A later extension to the right involved redesigning the ground-floor shop front to create a central entrance, with the upper floors echoing the original design.

The exterior features first and second floor oriel windows and smaller canted bay windows on the upper floors. These windows have moulded timber cross casements with diamond leaded lights, set beneath bracketed cornices. Below the second-floor windows, coats of arms and insignia are displayed. The gables are timber framed with ornate bargeboards and finials. Vertical panels between the bays are enriched with sculpted figures beneath cusped canopies, low relief cartouches, and heraldic emblems, depicting Edward the Elder and Henry to the left, Edward III and Elizabeth in the centre, and Althelstan and John to the right.

A first-floor panel commemorates the Saxon kings crowned “NEAR THIS SPOT”: Edward the Elder (902), Athelstan (924), Edmund (940), Edred (946), Edwy (955), Edward the Martyr (975), and Ethelred (979). Adjacent to this panel is another inscribed with details of the confirmation of Kingston’s Royal Borough status by King George V in 1927.

The shop front features slender glazing bars above a panelled stall riser and a plain fascia ornamented with squirrels in relief, topped by a continuous foliate frieze with shields.

Inside, an open well stair at the rear has square newels and a rectilinear balustrade. A large stained glass window illuminates the stairwell, depicting the crowning of the Saxon kings alongside civic emblems and shields. Other stained glass panels commemorate past monarchs and civic dignitaries.