Kingston Vale with Kingston Hill is a district in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in south-west London. It is a residential area between Richmond Park, the much smaller Putney Vale, Wimbledon Common, Coombe/Coombe Hill and the Norbiton part of the very old borough. The main road is the A308 (also called Kingston Vale and Kingston Hill) which is a through route for traffic passing to and from Kingston Hill to the A3 trunk road (locally known as the Kingston By-pass). Many of the branch roads are cul-de-sacs. It includes, toward the east and in the Vale, the only part of Kingston which drains eastward, that is, into Beverley Brook. The hill expanse, shared with Coombe and a golf course, has a hotel, some tall blocks overlooking Kingston, the edge of Kingston Hospital, the main campus of Kingston University London and faint remnants of dense woodland. History An inn, the Bald-Faced Stag, stood on the site of the present day Asda from around 1650 into the 19th century. The inn was reputedly a haunt of the highwayman Jerry Abershawe until his execution in 1795, after which his body was displayed in a gibbet at Putney Vale. Etymology The vale part was little-inhabited and known as Kingston Bottom until the middle of the 19th century; the name is featured in a variety of documents dating from 1791 to c. 1850. The Last Will and Testament of one Philip Cawston, dated 26 September 1791, refers to his ownership of the Robin Hood premises in Kingston Bottom; the name also features in maps and wills held by the National Archives dating from 1791 to 1856. The earliest record of the new name Kingston Vale occurs in the 1861 Census Returns, where the area is referred to as 'Kingston Vale Hamlet'. By the time of the 1891 Census, the area is described as a 'civil parish, township or place' under the name of 'Kingston Vale'. A detailed summary of Kingston of 1848 names the recent new churches and describes the one erected in this neighbourhood as "at Robinhood-Gate". Robin Hood Place Names The name of Robin Hood has long been associated with the Kingston Vale area which is close to the Robin Hood Gate of Richmond Park (the name of the gate appearing in records from at least 1785, and a nearby "Robynhood Walke" and "Robyn-hodes Walke" in 1548). Maps of the areas